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THE QUALITY OF MERCY 


AUTIIOU OF 
(( 


HARPER 


U lllovel 



W. D. HOWELLS 


“an imperative duty” “ANNIE KILBURN*’ 
. HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES ” ETC. 


NEW YORK 

b BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1893 



> ) > 

> 







OCT 

< 3 ';- 3 . 


1 ri._ 


1 


WILLIAM DEAN HOAVELLS’S 
NOVELS. 


USIFORM LIBRARY EDITION. 
Post 8vo, Cloth. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. $1 50. 

AN IMPERATIVE DUTY. $1 00. 

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 2 Vols., $2 00. 
THE SHADOW OF A DREAM. $1 00. 

ANNIE KILBURN. $1 50. 

APRIL HOPES. $1 50. 


PcnLiSHEO BY HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 


Copyright, 1891, by William Dbak Howells. 


Elcctrotyped by 8. J. Pabkhill h Co., Boaton- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


PART FIRST. 


I. 


Northwick’s man met him at the station with the 
cutter. The train was a little late, and Elbridge was 
a little early ; after a few moments of formal waiting, 
he began to walk the clipped horses up and down the 
street. As they walked they sent those quivers and 
thrills over their thin coats which horses can give at 
will ; they moved their heads up and down, slowly 
and easily, and made their bells jangle noisily together; 
the bursts of sound evoked by their firm and nervous 
pace died back in showers and falling drops of music. 
All the time Elbridge swore at them affectionately, 
with the unconscious profanity of the rustic Yankee 
whose lot has been much cast with horses. In the 
halts he made at each return to the station, he let 
his blasphemies bubble sociably from him in response 
to the friendly imprecations of the three or four other 
drivers who were waiting for the train ; they had 
apparently no other parlance. The drivers of the 
hotel ’bus and of the local express wagon were par- 


2 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


ticular friends ; they gave each other to perdition at 
every other word ; a growing boy, who had come to 
meet Mr. Gerrish, the merchant, with the family 
sleigh, made himself a fountain of meaningless male- 
dictions ; the public hackman, who admired Elbridge 
almost as much as he respected Elbridge’s horses (they 
were really North wick’s, but the professional conven- 
tion was that they were Elbridge’s), clothed them 
with fond curses as with a garment. He was himself, 
more literally speaking, clothed in an old ulster, much 
frayed about the wrists and skirts, and polished across 
the middle of the back by rubbing against counters 
and window-sills. He was bearded like a patriarch, 
and he wore a rusty fur cap pulled down over his ears, 
though it was not very cold ; its peak rested on the 
point of his nose, so that he had to throw his head 
far back to get Elbridge in the field of his vision, 
Elbridge had on a high hat, and was smoothly but- 
toned to his throat in a plain coachman’s coat of black ; 
Northwick had never cared to have him make a closer 
approach to a livery ; and it is doubtful if Elbridge 
would have done it if he had asked or ordered it of 
him. He deferred to Northwick in a measure as the 
owner of his horses, but he did not defer to him in any 
other quality. 

‘‘ Say, Elbridge, when you goin’ to give me that old 
hat o’ your’n ? ” asked the hackman in a shout that 
would have reached Elbridge if he had been half a 
mile off instead of half a rod. 

‘^What do you want of another second-hand hat, 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


3 


you old fool, you?” asked Elbridge in his 

turn. 

The hackmaii doubled himself down for joy, and 
slapped his leg; at the sound of a whistle to the east- 
ward, he pulled himself erect again, and said, as if 
the fact were one point gained, “ Well, there she 
blows, any way.” Then he went round the corner of 
the station to be in full readiness for any chance pas- 
senger the train might improbably bring him. 

No one alighted but Mr. Gerrish and Northwick. 
Mr. Gerrish found it most remarkable that he should 
have come all the way from Boston on the same train 
with Northwick and not known it ; but Northwick was 
less disposed to wonder at it. He passed rapidly 
beyond the following of Mr. Gerrish, and mounted to 
the place Elbridge made for him in the cutter. While 
Elbridge was still tucking the robes about their legs, 
Northwick drove away from the station, and through 
the village up to the rim of the highland that lies 
between Hatboro’ and South Hatboro’. The bare 
line cut along the horizon where the sunset lingered 
in a light of liquid crimson; paling and passing into 
weaker violet tints with every moment, but still ten- 
derly flushing the walls of the sky, and holding longer 
the accent of its color where a keen star had here and 
there already pierced it and shone quivering through. 
The shortest days were past, but in the first week of 
February they had not lengthened sensibly, though to 
a finer perception there was the promise of release 
from the winter dark, if not from the winter cold. It 


4 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


was not far from six o’clock when Northwick mounted 
the southward rise of the street; it was still almost 
liirht enough to read; and the little slender black 
figure of a man that started up in the middle of the 
road, as if it had risen out of the ground, had an 
even vivid distinctness. He must have been lying in 
the snow ; the horses crouched back with a sudden 
recoil, as if he had struck them back with his arm, 
and plunged the runners of the cutter into the deeper 
snow beside the beaten track. He made a slight 
pause, long enough to give Northwick a contemptuous 
glance, and then continued along the road at a leisurely 
pace to the deep cut through the snow from the next 
house. Here he stood regarding such difficulty as 
Northwick had in quieting his horses, and getting 
underway again. He said nothing, and Northwick 
did not speak ; Elbridge growled, He’s on one of 
his tears again,” and the horses dashed forward with 
a shriek of all their bells. Northwick did not open 
his lips till he entered the avenue of firs that led from 
the highway to his house ; they were still clogged with 
the snowfall, and their lowermost branches were buried 
in the drifts. 

What’s the matter with the colt ? ” he asked. 

“ I don’t know as that fellow understands the colt’s 
feet very well. I guess one of the shoes is set wrong,” 
said Elbridge. 

“ Better look after it.” 

Northwick left Elbridge the reins, and got out of the 
cutter at the flight of granite steps which rose to the 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


5 


ground-floor of his wooden palace. Broad levels of 
piazza stretched away from the entrance under a 
portico of that carpentry which so often passes with 
us for architecture. In spite of the effect of organic 
flimsiness in every wooden structure but a log cabin, 
or a fisherman’s cottage shingled to the ground, the 
house suggested a perfect functional comfort. There 
were double windows on all round the piazzas ; a mel- 
low glow from the incandescent electrics penetrated to 
the outer dusk from them ; when the door was opened 
to Northwick, a pleasant heat gushed out, together 
with the perfume of flowers, and the odors of dinner. 

“ Dinner is just served, sir,” said the inside man, 
disposing of North wick’s overcoat and hat on the hall 
table with respectful scruple. 

Northwick hesitated. He stood over the register, 
and vaguely held his hands in the pleasant warmth 
indirectly radiated from the steam-pipes below. 

‘‘ The young ladies were just thinking you wouldn’t 
be home till the next train,” the man suggested, at the 
sound of voices from the dining-room. 

‘‘ They have some one with them ? ” Northwick 
asked. 

“ Yes, sir. The rector, sir ; Mr. Wade, sir.” 

“ I’ll come down by and by,” Northwick said, turn- 
ing to the stairs. ‘‘ Say I had a late lunch before I 
left town.” 

“ Yes, sir,” said the man. 

Northwick went on up stairs, with footfalls hushed 
by the thickly-padded thick carpet, and turned into 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 




the sort of study that opened out of his bedroom. It 
had been his wife’s parlor during the few years of her 
life in the house which he had built for her, and which 
they had planned to spend their old age in together. 
It faced southward, and looked out over the green- 
houses and the gardens, that stretched behind the 
house to the bulk of woods, shutting out the stage- 
picturesqueness of the summer settlement of South 
Hatboro’. She had herself put the rocking-chair 
in the sunny bay-window, and Northwick had not 
allowed it to be disturbed there since her death. In 
an alcove at one side he had made a place for the safe 
where he kept his papers ; his wife had intended to 
keep their silver in it, but she had been scared by the 
notion of having burglars so close to them in the night, 
and had always left the silver in the safe in the dining- 
room. 

She was all her life a timorous creature, and after 
her marriage had seldom felt safe out of North wick’s 
presence. Her portrait, by Hunt, hanging over the 
mantelpiece, suggested something of this, though the 
painter had made the most of her thin, middle-aged 
blond good looks, and had given her a substance of 
general character which was more expressive of his 
own free and bold style than of the facts in the case. 
She was really one of those hen-minded women, who 
are so common in all walks of life, and are made up 
of only one aim at a time, and of manifold anxieties at 
all times. Her instinct for saving long survived the 
days of struggle in which she had joined it to North- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


7 


wick’s instinct for getting ; she lived and died in the 
hope, if not the belief, that she had contributed to his 
prosperity by looking strictly after all manner of 
valueless odds and ends. But he had been passively 
happy with her ; since her death, he had allowed her 
to return much into his thoughts, from which her troub- 
lesome solicitudes and her entire uselessness in impor- 
tant matters had obliged him to push her while she 
lived. He often had times when it seemed to him 
that he was thinking of nothing, and then he found he 
had been thinking of her. At such times, with a pang, 
he realized that he missed her ; but perhaps the wound 
was to habit rather than affection. He now sat down 
in his swivel-chair and turned it from the writing-desk 
which stood on the rug before the fireplace, and looked 
up into the eyes of her effigy with a sense of her intan- 
gible presence in it, and with a dumb longing to rest 
his soul against hers. She was the only one who could 
have seen him in his wish to have not been what he 
was ; she would have denied it to his face, if he had 
told her he was a thief ; and as he meant to make him- 
self more and more a thief, her love would have eased 
the way by full acceptance of the theories that ran 
along with his intentions and covered them with pre- 
tences of necessity. He thought how even his own 
mother could not have been so much comfort to him ; 
she would have had the mercy, but she would not have 
had the folly. At the bottom of his heart, and under 
all his pretences. North wick knew that it was not 
mercy which would help him ; but he wanted it, as 


8 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


we all want what is comfortable and bad for us at 
times. With the performance and purpose of a thief 
in his heart, he turned to the pictured face of his dead 
wife as his refuge from the face of all living. It could 
not look at him as if he were a thief. 

The word so filled his mind that it seemed always 
about to slip from his tongue. It was what the presi- 
dent of the board had called him when the fact of his 
fraudulent manipulation of the company’s books was 
laid so distinctly before him that even the insane 
refusal, which the criminal instinctively makes of his 
crime in its presence, was impossible. The other 
directors sat blankly round, and said nothing ; not 
because they hated a scene, but because the ordinary 
course of life among us had not supplied them with 
the emotional materials for making one. The presi- 
dent, however, had jumped from his seat and advanced 
upon Northwick. ‘‘ What does all this mean, sir ? I’ll 
tell you what it means. It means that you’re a thief, 
sir ; the same as if you had picked my pocket, or stolen 
my horse, or taken my overcoat out of my hall.” 

He shook his clenched fist in Northwick’s face, and 
seemed about to take him by the throat. Afterwards 
he inclined more to mercy than the others ; it was he 
who carried the vote which allowed Northwick three 
days’ grace, to look into his affairs, and lay before the 
directors the proof that he had ample means, as he 
maintained, to meet the shortage in the accounts. “ I 
wish you well out of it, for your family’s sake,’' he 
said at parting; “but all the same, sir, you area 
thief.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


9 


He put his hands ostentatiously in his pockets, when 
some others meaninglessly shook hands with North- 
wick, at parting, as North wick himself might have 
shaken hands with another in his place ; and he 
brushed by him out of the door without looking at 
him. He came suddenly back to say, If it were a 
question of you alone, I would cheerfully lose some- 
thing more than you’ve robbed me of for the pleasure 
of seeing you handcuffed in this room and led to jail 
through the street by a constable. No honest man, 
no man who was not always a rogue at heart, could 
have done what you’ve done ; juggled with the books 
for years, and bewitched the record so by your infernal 
craft, that it was never suspected till now. You’ve 
given mind to your scoundrelly work, sir ; all the 
mind you had ; for if you hadn’t been so anxious to 
steal successfully, you’d have given more mind to the 
use of your stealings. You may have some of them 
left, but it looks as if you’d made ducks and drakes of 
them, like any petty rascal in the hands of the Em- 
ployees’ Insurance Company. Yes, sir, I believe 
you’re of about the intellectual calibre of that sort of 
thief. I can’t respect you even on your own ground. 
But I’m willing to give you the chance you ask, for 
your daughter’s sake. She’s been in and out of my 
house with my girl like one of my own children, and 
I won’t send her father to jail if I can help it. Under- 
stand ! I haven’t any sentiment for Northwick. 
You’re the kind of rogue I’d like to see in a convict’s 
jacket, learning to make shoe-brushes. But you shall 


10 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


have your chance to go home and see if you can pay 
up somehow, and you sha’n’t be shadowed while you’re 
at it. You shall keep your outside to the world three 
days longer, you whited sepulchre ; but if you want 
to know, I think the best thing that could happen to 
you on your way home would be a good railroad 
accident.” 

The man’s words and looks were burnt into North- 
wick’s memory, which now seemed to have the faculty 
of simultaneously reproducing them all. North wick 
remembered his purple face, with its prominent eyes, 
and the swing of his large stomach, and just how it 
struck against the jamb as he whirled a second time 
out of the door. The other directors, some of them, 
stood round buttoned up in their overcoats, with their 
hats on, and a sort of stunned aspect ; some held 
their hats in their hands, and looked down into them 
with a decorous absence of expression, as people do at 
a funeral. Then they left him alone in the treasurer’s 
private room, with its official luxury of thick Turkey 
rugs, leathern arm-chairs, and nickel-plated cuspidors 
standing one on each side of the hearth where a fire 
of soft coal in a low-down grate burned with a sub- 
dued and respectful flicker. 


IL 


If it had not been for the boisterous indignation of 
the president, Northwick might have come away from 
the meeting, after the exposure of his defalcations, with 
an unimpaired personal dignity. But as it was, he felt 
curiously shrunken and shattered, till the prevailing 
habit of his mind enabled him to piece himself together 
again and resume his former size and shape. This 
happened very quickly ; he had conceived of himself 
so long as a man employing funds in his charge in 
speculations sometimes successful and sometimes not, 
but at all times secured by his personal probity and 
reliability. He had in fact more than once restored 
all that he had taken, and he had come to trust him- 
self in the course of these transactions as fully as he 
was trusted by the men who were ignorant of his irreg- 
ularities. He was somehow flattered by the complete 
confidence they reposed in him, though he really felt 
it to be no more than his due ; he had always merited 
and received the confidence of men associated with 
him in business, and he had come to regard the funds 
of the corporation as practically his own. In the early 
days of his connection with the company, it largely 
owed its prosperity to his wise and careful manage- 
ment; one might say that it was not until the last, 
when he got so badly caught by that drop in railroads, 


12 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


that he had felt anything wrong in his convertible use 
of its money. It was an informality ; he would not 
have denied that, but it was merely an informality. 
Then his losses suddenly leaped beyond his ability to 
make them good ; then, for the first time, he began 
to practice that system in keeping the books which 
the furious president called juggling with them. Even 
this measure he considered a justifiable means of self- 
defence pending the difficulties which beset him, and 
until he could make his losses good by other opera- 
tions. From time to time he was more fortunate ; and 
whenever he dramatized himself in an explanation to 
the directors, as he often did, especially of late, he 
easily satisfied them as to the nature of his motives 
and the propriety of his behavior, by calling their 
attention to these successful deals, and to the proba- 
bility, the entire probability, that he could be at any 
moment in a position to repay all he had borrowed of 
the company. He called it borrowing, and in his long 
habit of making himself these loans and returning 
them, he had come to have a sort of vague feeling that 
the company was privy to them ; that it was almost an 
understood thing. The president’s violence was the 
first intimation to reach him in the heart of his artifi- 
cial consciousness that his action was at all in the line 
of those foolish peculators whose discovery and flight 
to Canada was the commonplace of every morning’s 
paper ; such a commonplace that he had been sensible 
of an effort in the papers to vary the tiresome repeti- 
tion of the same old fact by some novel grace of wit. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


13 


or some fresh picturesqueness in putting it. In the 
presence of the directors, he had refused to admit it to 
himself ; but after they adjourned, and he was left alone, 
he realized the truth. He was like those fools, exactly 
like them, in what they had done, and in the way of 
doing it; he was like them in motive and principle. 
All of them had used others’ money in speculation, ex- 
pecting to replace it, and then had not been able to re- 
place it, and then had skipped, as the newspapers said. 

Whether he should complete the parallel, and skip, 
too, was a point which he had not yet acknowledged 
to himself that he had decided. He never had believed 
that it need come to that; but, for an instant, when 
the president said he could wish him nothing better 
on his way home than a good railroad accident, it 
flashed upon him that one of the three alternatives 
before him was to skip. He had the choice to kill 
himself, which was supposed to be the gentlemanly 
way out of his difficulties, and would leave his family 
unstained by his crime; that matter had sometimes 
been discussed in his presence, and every one had 
agreed that it was the only thing for a gentleman to 
do after he had pilfered people of money he could not 
pay back. There was something else that a man of 
other instincts and weaker fibre might do, and that 
was to stand his trial for embezzlement, and take his 
punishment. Or a man, if he was that kind of a man, 
could skip. The question with Northwick was whether 
he was that kind of man, or whether, if he skipped, he 
would be that kind of man ; whether the skipping 
would make him that kind of man. 


14 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


The question was a cruel one for the self-respect 
which he had so curiously kept intact. He had been 
respectable ever since he was born ; if he was born 
with any instinct it was the instinct of respectability, 
the wish to be honored for what he seemed. It was 
all the stronger in him, because his father had never 
had it ; perhaps an hereditary trait found expression 
in him after passing over one generation ; perhaps an 
antenatal influence formed him to that type. His 
mother was always striving to keep the man she had 
married worthy of her choice in the eyes of her neigh- 
bors ; but he had never seconded her efforts. He had 
been educated a doctor, but never practised medicine ; 
in carrying on the drug and book business of the vil- 
lage, he cared much more for the literary than the 
pharmaceutical side of it ; he liked to have a circle of 
cronies about the wood-stove in his store till midnight, 
and discuss morals and religion with them ; and one 
night, when denying the plenary inspiration of the 
Scriptures, he went to the wrong jar for an ingredient 
of the prescription he was making up ; the patient died 
of his mistake. The disgrace and the disaster broke 
his wife’s heart ; but he lived on to a vague and color- 
less old age, supported by his son in a total disoccupa- 
tion. The elder Northwick used sometimes to speak 
of his son and his success in the world ; not boastfully, 
but with a certain sarcasm for the source of his bounty, 
as a boy who had always disappointed him by a nar- 
rowness of ambition. He called him Milt, and he said 
he supposed now Milt was the most self-satisfied man 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


15 


in Massachusetts ; he implied that there were better 
things than material success. He did not say what 
they were, and he could have found very few people 
in that village to agree with him ; or to admit that the 
treasurer of the Poiikwifsset Mills had come in any- 
wise short of the destiny of a man whose father had 
started him in life with the name of John Milton. 
They called him Milt, too, among themselves, and per- 
haps here and there a bolder spirit might have called 
him so to his face if he had ever come back to the 
village. But he had not. He had, as they had all 
heard, that splendid summer place at Hatboro’, where 
he spent his time when he was not at his house in 
Boston ; and when they verified the fact of his immense 
prosperity by inquiry of some of the summer-folks who 
knew him or knew about him, they were obscurely 
flattered by the fact ; just as many of us are proud of 
belonging to a nation in which we are enriched by 
the fellow-citizenship of many manifold millionnaires. 
They did not blame North wick for never coming to see 
his father, or for never having him home on a visit ; 
they daily saw what old Northwick was, and how little 
he was fitted for the society of a man whose respecta- 
bility, even as it was reflected upon them, was so daz- 
zling. Old Northwick had never done anything for 
Milt ; he had never even got along with him ; the fel- 
low had left him, and made his own way ; and the old 
man had no right to talk ; if Milt was ever of a mind 

to cut off his rations, the old man would soon see. 

2 


III. 


The local opinion scarcely did justice to old North- 
wick’s imperfect discharge of a father’s duties ; his 
critics could not have realized how much some capaci- 
ties, if not tastes, which Northwick had inherited, con- 
tributed to that very effect of respectability which they 
revered. The early range of books, the familiarity 
with the mere exterior of literature, restricted as it 
was, helped Northwick later to pass for a man of edu- 
cation, if not of reading, with men who were them- 
selves less read than educated. The people whom his 
ability threw him with in Boston were all Harvard 
men, and they could not well conceive of an acquaint- 
ance, so gentlemanly and quiet as Northwick, who was 
not college bred, too. By unmistakable signs, which 
we carry through life, they knew he was from the 
country, and they attributed him to a freshwater col- 
lege. They said, “ You’re a Dartmouth man, North- 
wick, I believe,” or, I think you’re from Williams,” 
and when Northwick said no, they forgot it, and 
thought that he was a Bowdoin man ; the impression 
gradually fixed itself that he was from one or other 
of those colleges. It was believed in like manner, 
partly on account of his name, that he was from one of 
those old ministerial families that you find up in the 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


17 


hills, where the whole brood study Greek while they 
are sugaring off in the spring ; and that his own mother 
had fitted him for college. There was, in fact, some- 
thing clerical in North wick’s bearing ; and it was felt 
by some that he had studied for the ministry, but had 
gone into business to help his family. The literary 
phase of the superstition concerning him was humored 
by the library which formed such a striking feature 
of his house in Boston, as well as his house in Hat- 
boro’ ; at Hatboro’ it was really vast, and was so 
charming and so luxurious that it gave the idea of a 
cultivated family; they preferred to live in it, and 
rarely used the drawing-room, which was much smaller, 
and was a gold and white sanctuary on the north side 
of the house, only opened when there was a large 
party of guests, for dancing. Most people came and 
went without seeing it, and it remained shut up, as 
much a conjecture as the memory of Northwick’s wife. 
She was supposed to have been taken from him early, 
to save him and his children from the mortifying con- 
sequences of one of those romantic love-affairs in which 
a conscientious man had sacrificed himself to a girl he 
was certain to outgrow. None of his world knew that 
his fortunes had been founded upon the dowry she 
brought him, and upon the stay her belief in him had 
always been. She was a church-member, as such 
women usually are, but Northwick was really her 
religion ; and as there is nothing that does so much to 
sanctify a deity as the blind devotion of its worshippers, 
Northwick was rendered at times worthy of her faith 


18 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


by the intensity of it. In his sort he returned her 
love ; he was not the kind of man whose affections are 
apt to wander, perhaps because they were few and 
easily kept together ; perhaps because he was really 
principled against letting them go astray. He was 
not merely true in a passive way, but he was constant 
in the more positive fashion. When they began to 
get on in the world, and his business talent brought 
him into relations with people much above them 
socially, he yielded to her shrinking from the oppor- 
tunities of social advancement that opened to them, 
and held aloof with her. This kept him a country 
person in his experiences much longer than he need 
have remained ; and tended to that sort of defensive 
secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, 
and qualified his conduct in matters where there was 
no question of his knowledge of the polite world. It 
was not until after his wife’s death, and until his 
daughters began to grow up into the circles where 
his money and his business associations authorized 
them to move, that he began to see a little of that 
world. Even then he left it chiefly to his children ; 
for himself he continued quite simply loyal to his 
wife’s memory, and apparently never imagined such a 
thing as marrying again. 

He rose from the chair where he had sat looking up 
into her pictured face, and went to open the safe near 
the window. But he stopped in stooping over to 
work the combination, and glanced out across his 
shoulder into the night. The familiar beauty of the 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


19 


scene tempted him to the window for what, all at once, 
he felt might be his last look, though the next instant 
he was able to argue the feeling down, and make his 
meditated act work into his schemes of early retrieval 
and honorable return. He must have been thinking 
there before the fire a long time, for now the moon 
had risen, and shone upon the black bulk of firs to the 
southward, and on the group of outbuildings. These 
were in a sort the mechanism that transacted the 
life of his house, ministering to all its necessities and 
pleasures. Under the conservatories, with their long 
stretches of glass, catching the moon’s rays like levels 
of water, was the steam furnace that imparted their 
summer climate, through heavy mains carried below 
the basement, to every chamber of the mansion ; a 
ragged plume of vapor escaped from the tall chimney 
above them, and dishevelled itself in diaphanous silver 
on the night-breeze. Beyond the hot-houses lay the 
cold graperies ; and off to the left rose the stables ; 
in a cosy nook of this low mass Northwick saw the 
lights of the coachman’s family-rooms ; beyond the 
stables were the cow-barn and the dairy, with the 
farmer’s cottage ; it was a sort of joke with North- 
wick’s business friends that you could buy butter of 
him sometimes at less than half it cost him, and the 
joke flattered North wick’s sense of baronial conse- 
quence with regard to his place. It was really a farm 
in extent, and it was mostly a grazing farm ; his cattle 
were in the herd-books, and he raised horses, which 
he would sell now and then to a friend ; they were so 


20 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


distinctly varied from the original stock as to form 
almost a breed of themselves ; they numbered scores 
in his stalls and pastures. The whole group of the 
buildings was so great that it was like a sort of com- 
munal village. In the silent moonlight North wick 
looked at it as if it were an expansion or extension of 
himself, so personally did it seem to represent his 
tastes, and so historical was it of the ambitions of his 
whole life ; he realized that it would be like literally 
tearing himself from it, when he should leave it. That 
would be the real pang ; his children could come to 
him, but not his home. But he reminded himself that 
he was going only for a time, until he could rehabili- 
tate himself, and come back upon the terms he could 
easily make when once he was on his feet again. He 
thought how fortunate it was that in the meanwhile 
this property could not be alienated ; how fortunate it 
was that he had originally deeded it to his wife in the 
days when he had the full right to do so, and she had 
willed it to their children by a perfect entail. The 
horses and the cattle might go, and probably must go ; 
and he winced to think of it, but the land, and the 
house, — all but the furniture and pictures, — were the 
children’s and could not be touched. The pictures 
wpre his, and would have to go with the horses and 
cattle ; but ten or twelve thousand dollars would re- 
place them, and he must add that sum to his other 
losses, and bear it as well as he could. 

After all, when everything was said and done, he 
was the chief loser. If he was a thief, as that man 


thf: quality of mercy. 


21 


said, he could show that he had robbed himself of two 
dollars for every dollar that he had robbed anybody 
else of ; if now he was going to add to his theft by 
carrying off the forty-three thousand dollars of the 
company’s which he found himself possessed of, it was 
certainly not solely in his own interest. It was to be 
the means of recovering all that had gone before it, 
and that the very men whom it would enable him to 
repay finally in full, supposed it to have gone with. 

Northwick felt almost a glow of pride in clarifying 
this point to his reason. The additional theft pre- 
sented itself almost in the light of a duty ; it really 
was his duty to make reparation to those he had 
injured, if he had injured any one, and it was his first 
duty to secure the means of doing it. If that money, 
which it might almost be said was left providentially 
in his hands, were simply restored now to the company, 
it would do comparatively no good at all, and would 
strip him of every hope of restoring the whole sum 
he had borrowed. He arrived at that word again, 
and reinforced by it, he stooped again to work the 
combination of his safe, and make sure of the money, 
which he now felt an insane necessity of laying his 
hands on ; but he turned suddenly sick, with a sick- 
ness at the heart or at the stomach, and he lifted 
himself, and took a turn about the room. 

He perceived that in spite of the outward calm 
which it had surprised him to find in himself, he was 
laboring under some strong inward stress, and he must 
have relief from it if he was to carry this business 


22 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


through. He threw up the window and stood with 
his hand on the sash, quivering in the strong in-rush 
of the freezing air. But it strengthened him^ and 
when he put down the window after a few moments, 
his faintness passed altogether. Still, he thought he 
would not go through that business at once ; there 
was time enough ; he would see his girls and tell them 
that he was obliged to leave by an early train in the 
morning. 

He took off his shoes, and put on his slippers and 
his house-coat, and went to the stair-landing outside, 
and listened to the voices in the library below. He 
could hear only women’s voices, and he inferred that 
the young man who had been dining with his daughters 
was gone. He went back into his bed-room, and 
looked at the face of an unmasked thief in his glass. 
It was not to get that aspect of himself, though, that 
he looked ; it was to see if he was pale or would seem 
ill to his children. 


IV. 


North'nvick was food of both his daughters ; if he 
was more demoustrative in meeting the younger, it 
was because she had the more modern and more urban 
habit of caressing her father ; the elder, who was very 
much the elder, followed an earlier country fashion 
of self-possession, and remained silent and seated when 
he came into the room, though she watched with a 
pleased interest the exchange of endearments between 
him and her sister. Her name was Adeline, which 
was her mother’s name, too ; and she had the effect 
of being the aunt of the young girl. She was thin 
and tall, and she had a New England indigestion 
which kept her looking frailer than she really was. 
She conformed to the change of circumstances which 
she had grown into almost as consciously as her 
parents, and dressed richly in sufficiently fashionable 
gowns, which she preferred to have of silk, cinnamon 
or brown in color ; on her slight, bony fingers she 
wore a good many rings. 

Suzette was the name of the other daughter ; her 
mother had fancied that name ; but the single mono- 
syllable It had been shortened into somehow suited 
the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, 
with its suggestion of coquettishness. 

She asked, ‘‘Why didn’t you come down, papa? 


24 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Mr. Wade was calling, and he stayed to dinner.’’ She 
smiled, and it gave him a pang to see that she seemed 
unusually happy ; he could have borne better, he per- 
ceived, to leave her miserable ; at least, then, he 
would not have wholly made her so. 

I had some matters to look after,” he said. ‘‘ I 
thought I might get down before he went.” A deep 
leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where the 
young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either 
corner of the mant^ ; Northwick let himself sink into 
it, and with a glance at the face of the faintly ticking 
clock on the black marble shelf before him, he added 
casually, I must get an early train for Ponkwasset 
in the morning, and I still have some things to put in 
shape.” 

Is there any trouble there ? ” the girl asked from 
the place she had resumed. She held by one hand 
from the corner of the mantel, and let her head droop 
k,over on her arm. Her father had a sense of her 
extraordinary beauty, as a stranger might have had. 

“ Trouble ? ” he echoed. 

“ With the hands.” 

‘‘ Oh, no ; nothing of that sort. What made you 
think so?” asked Northwick, rapidly exploring the 
perspective opened up in his mind by her question, to 
see if it contained any suggestion of advantage to him. 
He found an instant’s relief in figuring himself called 
to the mills by a labor trouble. 

“ That tiresome little wretch of a Putney is going 
about circulating all sorts of reports.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


25 


“ There is no reason as yet, to suppose the strike 
will affect us,” said Northwick. But I think I had 
better be on the ground.” 

‘‘ I should think you could leave it to the Superin- 
tendent,” said the girl, “ without wearing your own 
life out about it.” 

“I suppose I might,” said Northwick, with an ef- 
fect of refusing to acquire merit by his behavior, ‘‘ but 
the older hands all know me so well, that — ” 

He stopped as if it were unnecessary to go on, and 
the elder daughter said : “ He is on one of his sprees 
again. I should think something ought to be done 
about him, for his family’s sake, if nothing else. El- 
bridge told James that you almost drove over him, 
coming up.” 

“ Yes,” said Northwick. “ I didn ’t see him until 
he started up under the horses’ feet.” 

‘‘ He will get killed, some of these days,” said Ade- 
line, with the sort of awful satisfaction in realizing a * 
catastrophe, which delicate women often feel. 

It would be the best thing for him,” said her 
sister, “and for his family, too. When a man is 
nothing but a burden and a disgrace to himself and 
everybody belonging to him, he had better die as soon 
as possible.” 

Northwick sat looking into his daughter’s beautiful 
face, but he saw the inflamed and heated visage of the 
president of the board, and he heard him saying, 

“ The best thing that could happen to you on your 
way hoine would be a good railroad accid^ntt’’ 


26 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


He sighed faintly, and said, “We can ’t always tell. 
I presume it isn’t for us to say.” He went on, with 
that leniency for the shortcomings of others which we 
feel when we long for mercy to our own : “ Putney is 
a very able man ; one of the ablest lawyers in the 
State, and very honest. He could be almost anything 
if he would let liquor alone. I don’t wish to judge 
him. He may have ” — North wick sighed again, and 
ended vaguely — “ his reasons.” 

Suzette laughed. “ How moderate you always are, 
papa ! And how tolerant ! ” 

“ I guess Mr. Putney knows pretty well whom he’s 
got to deal with, and that he’s safe in abusing you all 
he likes,” said Adeline. “ But I don’t see how such 
respectable people as Dr. Morrell and Mrs. Morrell 
can tolerate him. I’ve no patience with Dr. Morrell, 
or his wife, either. To be sure, they tolerate Mrs. 
Wilmington, too.” 

Suzette went over to her father to kiss him. “ Well, 
I’m going to bed, papa. If you’d wanted more of my 
society you ought to have come down sooner. I sup- 
pose I sha’n’t see you in the morning ; so it’s good-bye 
as well as good-night. When will you be home ? ” 

“ Not for some days, perhaps,” said the unhappy man. 
“ How doleful ! Are you always so homesick when 
you go away ? ” 

“ Not always ; no.” 

“ Well, try to cheer up, this time, then. And if you 
have to be gone a great while, send for me, won’t 


THE QUALITY OE MERCY. 


27 


“ Yes, yes ; I will,” said Northwick. The girl gave 
his head a hug, and then glided out of the room. She 
stopped to throw him a kiss from the door. 

‘‘ There ! ” said Adeline. I didn’t mean to let Mrs. 
Wilmington slip out ; she can’t bear the name, and I 
know it drove her away. But you mustn’t let it worry 
you, father. I guess it’s all going well, now.” 

“ What’s going well ? ” Northwick asked, vaguely. 

The Jack Wilmington business. I know she’s 
really given him up at last; and we can’t be too 
thankful for that much, if it’s no more. I don’t be- 
lieve he’s bad, for all the talk about him, but he’s been 
weak, and that’s a thing she couldn’t forgive in a man ; 
she’s so strong herself.” 

Northwick did not think of Wilmington ; he thought 
of himself, and in the depths of his guilty soul, in 
those secret places underneath all his pretences, 
where he really knew himself a thief, he wondered 
if his child’s strength would be against her forgiving 
his weakness. What we greatly dread we most un- 
questioningly believe ; and it did not occur to him to 
ask whether impatience with weakness was a necessary 
inference from strength. He only knew himself to be 
miserably weak. 

He rose and stood a moment by the mantel, with his 
impassive, handsome face turned toward his daughter 
as if he were going to speak to her. He was a tall 
man, rather thin ; he was clean shaven, except for the 
grayish whiskers just forward of his ears and on a line 
with them ; he had a regular profile, which was more 


28 


tHE QUALITY OF MERClT. 


attractive than the expression of his direct regard. 
He took up a crystal ball that lay on the marble, and 
looked into it as if he were reading his future, in its 
lucid depths, and then put it down again, with an effect 
of helplessness. When he spoke, it was not in connec- 
tion with what his daughter had been talking about. 
He said almost dryly, “ I think I will go up and look 
over some papers I have to take with me, and then 
try to get a little sleep before I start.’’ 

“ And when shall we expect you back ? ” asked his 
daughter, submissively accepting his silence concern- 
ing her sister’s love affairs. She knew that it meant 
acquiescence in anything that Sue and she thought 
best. 

‘‘ I don’t know, exactly ; I can’t say, now. Good- 
night.” 

To her surprise he came up and kissed her ; his 
caresses were for Sue, and she expected them no more 
than she invited them. “ Why, father ! ” she said in 
a pleased voice. 

Let James pack the small bag for me, and send 
Elbridge to me in about an hour,” he said, as he went 
out into the hall. 


V, 


Northwick was now fifty-nine years old, but long 
before he reached this age he had seen many things to 
make him doubt the moral government of the universe. 
His earliest instruction had been such as we all re- 
ceive. He had been taught to believe that there was 
an overruling power which would punish him if he did 
wrong, and reward him if he did right ; or would, at 
least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. 
The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first 
enforced the fact of the punishment or the displeasure ; 
there were times when the reward or the pleasure 
might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but evil 
behavior never escaped the just consequences. This 
was the doctrine which framed the man’s intention if 
not his conduct of life, and continued to shape it years 
after experience of the world, and especially of the 
business world, had gainsaid it. He had seen a great 
many cases in which not only good behavior had 
apparently failed of its reward but bad behavior 
had failed of its punishment. In the case of bad 
behavior, his observation had been that no unhappi- 
ness, not even any discomfort, came from it unless it 
was found out ; for the most part, it was not found 
out. This did not shake North wick’s principles ; he 
still intended to do right, so as to be on the safe side. 


30 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


even in a remote and improbable contingency ; but it 
enabled him to compromise with his principles and to 
do wrong provisionally and then repair the wrong 
before he was found out, or before the overruling 
power noticed him. 

But now there were things that made him think, in 
the surprising misery of being found out, that this 
power might have had its eye upon him all the time, 
and was not sleeping, or gone upon a journey, as he 
had tacitly flattered himself. It seemed to him that 
there was even a dramatic contrivance in the circum- 
stances to render his anguish exquisite. He had not 
read many books ; but sometimes his daughters made 
him go to the theatre, and once he had seen the play 
of Macbeth. The people round him were talking 
about the actor who played the part of Macbeth, but 
Northwick kept his mind critically upon the play, and 
it seemed to him false to what he had seen of life in 
having all those things happen just so, to fret the con- 
science and torment the soul of the guilty man ; he 
thought that in reality they would not have been quite 
so pat ; it gave him rather a low opinion of Shake- 
speare, lower than he would have dared to have if he 
had been a more cultivated man. Now that play came 
back into his mind, and he owned with a pang that it 
was all true. He was being quite as aptly visited for 
his transgression ; his heart was being wrung, too, by 
the very things that could hurt it most. He had not 
been very well of late, and was not feeling physically 
strong ; his anxieties had preyed upon him, and he had 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


31 


never felt the need of the comfort and quiet of his 
home so much as now when he was forced to leave it. 
Never had it all been so precious ; never had the 
beauty and luxury of it seemed so great. All that 
was nothing, though, to the thought of his children, 
especially of that youngest child, whom his heart was 
so wrapt up in, and whom he was going to leave 
to shame and ruin. The words she had spoken from 
her pride in him, her ignorant censure of that drunkard, 
as a man who had better die since he had become noth- 
ing but a burden and disgrace to his family, stung on 
as if by incessant repetition. He had crazy thoughts, 
impulses, fantasies, in which he swiftly dreamed renun- 
ciation of escape. Then he knew that it would not 
avail anything to remain ; it would not avail anything 
even to die ; nothing could avail anything at once, but 
in the end, his going would avail most. He must go ; 
it would break the child’s heart to face his shame, and 
she must face it. He did not think of his eldest 
daughter, except to think that the impending disaster 
could not affect her so ruinously. 

“ My God, my God ! ” he groaned, as he went up 
stairs. Adeline called from the room he had left, 
“ Did you speak, father ? 

He had a conscience, that mechanical conscience 
which becomes so active in times of great moral 
obliquity, against telling a little lie, and saying he had 
not spoken. He went on up stairs without answering 
anything. He indulged the self pity, a little longer, 
of feeling himself an old man forced from his home, 
3 B* 


32 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


and he had a blind reasonless resentment of the be- 
havior of the men who were driving him away, and 
whose interests, even at that moment, he was mindful 
of. But he threw off this mood when he entered his 
room, and settled himself to business. There was a 
good deal to be done in the arrangement of papers for 
his indefinite absence, and he used the same care in 
providing for some minor contingencies in the com- 
pany’s affairs as in leaving instructions to his children 
for their action until they should hear from him again. 
Afterwards this curious scrupulosity became a matter 
of comment among those privy to it; some held it 
another proof of the ingrained rascality of the man, a 
trick to suggest lenient construction of his general 
conduct in the management of the company’s finances, 
others saw in it an interesting example of the invol- 
untary operation of business instincts which persisted 
at a juncture when the man might be supposed to have 
been actuated only by the most intensely selfish motives. 

The question was not settled even in the final retro- 
spect, when it appeared that at the very moment that 
Northwick showed himself mindful of the company’s 
interests on those minor points, he was defrauding it 
further in the line of his defalcations, and keeping 
back a large sum of money that belonged to it. But 
at that moment Northwick did not consider that this 
money necessarily belonged to the company, any more 
than his daughters’ house and farm belonged to it. To 
be sure it was the fruit of money he had borrowed or 
taken from the company and had used in an enor- 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


33 


mously successful deal ; but the company had not 
earned it, and in driving him into a corner, in forcing 
him to make instant restitution of all its involuntary 
loans, it was justifying him in withholding this part of 
them. North wick was a man of too much sense to 
reason explicitly to this effect, but there was a sophis- 
try, tacitly at work in him to this effect, which made 
it possible for him to go on and steal more where he 
had already stolen so much. In fact it presented the 
further theft as a sort of duty. This sum, large as it 
was, really amounted to nothing in comparison with 
the sum he owed the company ; but it formed his 
only means of restitution, and if he did not take it and 
use it to that end, he might be held recreant to his 
moral obligations. He contended, from that vesti- 
bule of his soul where he was not a thief, with that 
self of his inmost where he was a thief, that it was 
all most fortunate, if not providential, as it had fallen 
out. Not only had his broker sent him that large 
check for his winnings in stocks the day before, but 
Northwick had, contrary to his custom, cashed the 
check, and put the money in his safe instead of bank- 
ing it. Now he could perceive a leading in the whole 
matter, though at the time it seemed a flagrant defi- 
ance of chance, and a sort of invitation to burglars. 
He seemed to himself like a burglar, when he had 
locked the doors and pulled down the curtains, and 
stood before the safe working the combination. He 
trembled, and when at last the mechanism announced 
its effect, with a slight click of the withdrawing bolt. 


34 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


he gave a violent start. At the same time there came 
a rou^h knock at the door, and Northwick called out 
in the choking, incoherent voice of one suddenly roused 
from sleep': Hello ! Who’s there ? What is it ? ” 
It’s me,” said Elbridge. 

“ Oh, yes ! Well ! All right ! Hold on, a minute ! 
Ah — you can come back in ten or fifteen minutes. 
I’m not quite ready for you, yet.” Northwick spoke 
the first broken sentences from the safe, where he stood 
in a frenzy of dismay ; the more collected words were 
uttered from his desk, where he ran to get his pistol. 
He did not know why he thought Elbridge might try 
to force his way in ; perhaps it was because any pres- 
ence on the outside of the door would have terrified 
him. He had time to recognize that he was not afraid 
for the money, but that he was afraid for himself in 
the act of taking it. 

Elbridge gave a cough on the other side of the door, 
and said with a little hesitation, “ All right,” and North- 
wick heard him tramp away, and go down stairs. 

He went back to the safe and pulled open the heavy 
door, whose resistance helped him shake off his ner- 
vousness. Then he took the money from the drawer 
where he had laid it, counted it, slipped it into the inner 
pocket of his waistcoat, and buttoned it in there. He 
shut the safe and locked it. The succession of these 
habitual acts calmed him more and more, and after he 
had struck a match and kindled the fire on his hearth, 
which he had hitherto forgotten, he was able to settle 
again to his preparations in writing. 


VI. 


When Elbridge came back, Northwick called out, 
“ Come in ! ” and then went and unlocked the door for 
him. “I forgot it was locked,’’ he said, carelessly. 
“ Do you think the colt’s going to be lame ? ” 

“ Well, I don’t like the way she behaves, very well. 
Them shoes have got to come off.” Elbridge stood at 
the corner of the desk, and diffused a strong smell of 
stable through the hot room. 

You’ll see to it, of course,” said Northwick. “ I’m 
going away in the morning, and I don’t know just how 
long I shall be gone.” Northwick satisfied his mechan- 
ical scruple against telling a lie by this formula ; and 
in its shelter he went on to give Elbridge instructions 
about the management of the place in his absence. He 
took some money from his pocket-book and handed it 
to him for certain expenses, and then he said, “ I want 
to take the five o’clock train, that reaches Ponkwasset 
at nine. You can drive me up with the black mare.” 

‘‘ All right,” said Elbridge ; but his tone expressed 
a shadow of reluctance that did not escape Northwick. 

“ Anything the matter ? ” he asked. 

“ I dunno. Our little boy don’t seem to be very 
well.” 

“ What ails him ? ” asked Northwick, with the sym- 
pathy it was a relief for him to feel. 


36 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Well, Dr. Morrell’s just been there, and he’s afraid 
it’s the membranous crou — ” The last letter stuck in 
Elbridge’s throat ; he gulped it down. 

‘‘ Oh, I hope not,” said Northwick. 

He’s cornin’ back again — he had to go off to an- 
other place — but I could see ’twa’n’t no use,” said 
Elbridge with patient despair ; he had got himself in 
hand again, and spoke clearly. 

Northwick shrank back from the shadow sweeping 
so near him; a shadow thrown from the skies, no 
doubt, but terrible in its blackness on the earth. 
“ Why, of course, you mustn’t think of leaving your 
wife. You must telephone Simpson to come for me.” 

All right.” Elbridge took himself away. 

Northwick watched him across the icy stable-yard, 
going to the coachman’s quarters in that cosy corner 
of the spreading barn; the windows were still as 
cheerily bright with lamplight as when ^hey struck 
a pang of dumb envy to North wick’s heart. The 
child’s sickness must have been very sudden for his 
daughters not to have known of it. He thought he 
ought to call Adeline, and send her in there to those 
poor people ; but he reflected that she could do no 
good, and he spared her the useless pain; she would 
soon need all her strength for herself. His thought 
returned to his own cares, from which the trouble of 
another had lured it for a moment. But when he 
heard the doctor’s sleighbells clash into the stable-yard, 
he decided to go himself and show the interest his 
family ought to feel in the matter. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


37 


No one answered his knock at Elbridge’s door, and 
he opened it and found his way into the room, where 
Elbridge and his wife were with the doctor. The 
little boy had started up in his crib, and was strug- 
gling, with his arms thrown wildly about. 

There ! There, he’s got another of them chokin’ 
spells ! ” screamed the mother. “ Elbridge Newton, 
ain’t you goin’ to do anything ? Oh help him, save 
him, Dr. Morrell ! Oh, I should think you’d be 
ashamed to let him suffer so I ” She sprang upon 
the child, and caught him from the doctor’s hands, 
and turned him this way and that trying to ease him ; 
he was suddenly quiet, and she said, ‘‘There, I just 
knew I could do it ! What are you big, strong men 
good for, any — ” She looked down at the child’s 
face in her arms, and then up at the doctor’s, and she 
gave a wild screech, like the cry of one in piercing 
torment. 

It turned Northwick heart-sick. He felt himself 
worse than helpless there ; but he went to the farmer’s 
house, and told the farmer’s wife to go over to the 
Newtons’ ; their kittle boy had just died. He heard 
her coming before he reached his own door, and when 
he reached his room, he heard the bells of the doctor’s 
sleigh clashing out of the avenue. 

The voice and the look of that childless mother 
haunted him. She had been one of the hat-shop hands, 
a flighty, nervous thing, madly in love with Elbridge, 
whom she ruled with a sort of frantic devotion since 
their marriage, compensating his cool quiet with a 


38 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


perpetual flutter of exaggerated sensibilities in every 
direction. But somehow she had put Northwick in 
mind of his own mother, and he thought of the chance 
or the will that had bereaved one and spared the 
other, and he envied the little boy who had just died. 

He considered the case of the parents who would 
want to make full outward show of their grief, and he 
wrote Elbridge a note, to be given him in the morn- 
ing, and enclosed one of the bills he was taking from 
the company ; he hoped Elbridge would accept it from 
him towards the expenses he must meet at such a time. 

Then he wheeled his chair about to the fire and 
stretched his legs out to get what rest he could before 
the hour of starting. He would have liked to go to 
bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case 
Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But 
he did not believe this possible, and he had smoothly 
confided himself to his experience of Elbridge’s infalli- 
bility, when he started awake at the sound of bells 
before the front door, and then the titter of the elec- 
tric bell over his bed in the next room. He thought 
it was an officer come to arrest him, but he remem- 
bered that only his household was acquainted with the 
use of that bell, and then he wondered that Simpson 
should have found it out. He put on his overcoat and 
arctics and caught up his bag, and hurried down stairs 
and out of doors. It was Elbridge who was waiting 
for him on the threshold, and took his bag from him. 

Why ! Where’s Simpson ? ” he asked. “ Couldn’t 
you get him ? ” 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


89 


It’s all right,” said Elbridge, opening the door of 
the booby, and gently bundling North wick into it. 

“ I could come just’s easy as not. I thought you’d 
ride better in the booby ; it’s a little mite chilly for 
the cutter.” The stars seemed points of ice in the 
freezing sky ; the broken snow clinked like charcoal 
around Elbridge’s feet. He shut the booby door and 
then came back and opened it slightly. I wa’n’t 
agoin’ to let no Simpson carry you to no train, noway.” 

The tears came into Northwick’s eyes, and he tried 
to say, Why, thank you, Elbridge,” but the door shut 
upon his failure, and Elbridge mounted to his place 
and drove away. North wick had been able to get out 
of his house only upon condition that he should behave 
as if he were going to be gone on an ordinary journey. 
He had to keep the same terms with himself on the 
way to the station. When he got out there he said 
to Elbridge, “ I’ve left a note for you on my desk. 
I’m sorry to be leaving home — at such a time — when 
you’ve — ” 

‘‘ You’ll telegraph when to meet you ? ” Elbridge 
suggested. 

“Yes,” said Northwick. He went inside the sta- 
tion, which was deliciously warm from the large regis- 
ter in the centre of the room, and brilliantly lighted in 
readiness for the train now almost due. The closing 
of the door behind Northwick roused a little blacks 
figure drooping forward on the benching in one corner. 
It was the drunken lawyer. There had been some 
displeasures, general and personal, between the two 


40 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


men, and they did not speak ; but now, at sight of 
North wick. Putney came forward, and fixed him 
severely with his eye. 

“ Northwick ! Do you know who you tried to drive 
over, last evening ? ’’ 

Northwick returned his regard with the half-ironical, 
half-patronizing look a dull man puts on with a person 
of less fortune but more brain. “ I didn’t see you, Mr. 
Putney, until I was quite upon you. The horses — ” 
It was the Law you tried to drive over ! ” thun- 
dered the little man with a voice out of keeping with 
his slender body. Don’t try it too often ! You can’t 
drive over the Law, yet — you haven’t quite millions 
enough for that. Heigh ? That so ? ” he queried, sen- 
sible of the anti-climax of asking such a question in 
that way, but tipsily helpless in it. 

Northwick did not answer ; he walked to the other 
end of the station set off for ladies, and Putney did 
not follow him. The train came in, and Northwick 
went out and got aboard. 


VIL 


The president of the Board, who had called North- 
wick a thief, and yet had got him a chance to make 
himself an honest man, was awake at the hour the 
defaulter absconded, after passing quite as sleepless a 
night. He had kept a dinner engagement, hoping to 
forget Northwick, but he seemed to be eating and 
drinking him at every course. When he came home 
toward eleven o’clock, he went to his library and sat 
down before the fire. His wife had gone to bed, and 
his son and daughter were at a ball ; and he sat there 
alone, smoking impatiently. 

He told the man who looked in to see if he wanted 
anything that he might go to bed ; he need not sit up 
for the young people. Hilary had that kind of con- 
sideration for servants, and he liked to practise it ; he 
liked to realize that he was practising it now, in a 
moment when every habit of his life might very well 
yield to the great and varying anxieties which beset 
him. 

He had an ideal of conduct, of what was due from 
him to himself, as a gentleman and a citizen, and he 
could not conceal from himself that he had been mainly 
instrumental in the escape of a rogue from justice, 
when he got the Board to give Northwick a chance. 


42 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


His ideals had not hitherto stood in the way of his 
comfort, his entire repose of mind, any more than they 
had impaired his prosperity, though they were of a 
kind far above those which commercial honor permits 
a man to be content with. He held himself bound, 
as a man of a certain origin and social tradition, to 
have public spirit, and he had a great deal of it. He 
believed that he owed it to the community to do noth- 
ing to lower its standards of personal integrity and 
responsibility ; and he distinguished himself by a grati- 
fied consciousness from those people of chromo-mo- 
rality, who held all sorts of loose notions on such 
points. His name stood not merely for so much 
money ; many names stood for far more ; but it meant 
reliability, it meant honesty, it meant good faith. He 
really loved these things, though, no doubt, he loved 
them less for their own sake than because they were 
spiritual properties of Eben Hilary. He did not expect 
everybody else to have them, but his theory of life 
exacted that they should be held the chief virtues. He 
was so conscious of their value that he ignored all those 
minor qualities in himself which rendered him not only 
bearable but even lovable ; he was not aware of hav- 
ing any sort of foibles, so that any error of conduct in 
himself surprised him even more than it pained him. 
It was not easy to recognize it ; but when he once saw 
it, he was not only willing but eager to repair it. 

The error that he had committed in Northwick’s 
case, if it was an error, was one that presented pecu- 
liar difficulties, as every error in life does ; the errors 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


43 


love an infinite complexity of disguise, and masquerade 
as all sorts of things. There were moments when 
Hilary saw his mistake so clearly that it seemed to 
him nothing less than the repayment of Northwick’s 
thefts from his own pocket would satisfy the claims of 
justice to his fellow-losers if North wick ran away ; 
and then again, it looked like the act of wise mercy 
which it had appeared to him when he was urging the 
Board to give the man a chance as the only thing 
which they could hopefully do in the circumstances, 
as common sense, as business. But it was now so ob- 
vious that a man like North wick could and would do 
nothing but run away if he were given the chance, 
that he seemed to have been his accomplice when he 
used the force of his personal character with them in 
Northwick’s behalf. He was in a ridiculous position, 
there was no doubt of that, and he was not going to 
get out of it without much painful wear and tear of 
pride, of self-respect. 

After a long time he looked at the clock, and found 
it still early for the return of his young people. He 
was impatient to see his son, and to get the situation 
in the light of his mind, and see how it looked there. 
He had already told him of the defalcation, and of 
what the Board had decided to do with North wick ; 
but this was while he was still in the glow of action, 
and he had spoken very hurriedly with Matt who 
came in just as he was going out to dinner ; it was 
before his cold fit came on. 

He had reached that time of life when a man likes 


44 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


to lay his troubles before his son ; and in the view his 
son usually took of his troubles, Hilary seemed to find 
another mood of his own. It was a fresher, different 
self dealing with them ; for the fellow was not only 
younger and more vigorous ; he was another temper- 
ament with the same interests, and often the same 
principles. He had disappointed Hilary in some ways, 
but he had gratified his pride in the very ways he had 
disappointed him. The father had expected the son 
to go into business, and Matt did go into the mills at 
Ponkwasset, where he was to be superintendent in the 
natural course. But one day he came home and told 
his father that he had begun to have his doubts of the 
existing relations of labor and capital ; and until he 
could see his way clearer he would rather give up his 
chance with the company. It was a keen disappoint- 
ment to Hilary ; he made no concealment of that ; but 
he did not quarrel with his son about it. He robustly 
tolerated Matt’s queer notions, not only because he 
was a father who blindly doted on his children and be- 
haved as if everything they did was right, no matter 
if it put him in the wrong, but because he chose to 
respect the fellow’s principles, if those were his princi- 
ples. He had his own principles, and Matt should have 
his if he liked. He bore entirely well the purpose 
of going abroad that Matt expressed, and he wished 
to give him much more money than the fellow would 
take, to carry on those researches which he made in 
his travels. When he came back and published his 
monograph on work and wages in Hurope, Hilary 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


45 


paid the expense, and took as unselfish an interest in 
the slow and meagre sale of the little book as if it had 
cost him nothing. 

Eben Hilary had been a crank, too, in his day, so 
far as to have gone counter to the most respectable 
feeling of business in Boston, when he came out an 
abolitionist. His individual impulse to radicalism had 
exhausted itself in that direction ; we are each of us 
good for only a certain degree of advance in opinion ; 
few men are indefinitely progressive ; and Hilary had 
not caught on to the movement that was carrying his 
son with it. But he understood how his son should be 
what he was, and he loved him so much that he 
almost honored him for what he called his balderdash 
about industrial slavery. His heart lifted when at last 
he heard the scratching of the night-latch at the door 
below, and he made lumbering haste down stairs to 
open and let the young people in. He reached the 
door as they opened it, and in the momentary lightness 
of his soul at sight of his children, he gave them a gay 
welcome, and took his daughter, all a fluff of soft 
silken and furry wraps, into his arms. 

Oh, don’t kiss my nose ! ” she called out. It’ll 
freeze you to death, papa ! What in the world are 
you up, for ? Anything the matter with mamma ? ” 

‘‘ No. She was in bed when I came home ; I 
thought I would sit up and ask what sort of a time 
you’d had.” 

Did you ever know me to have a bad one ? I had 
the best time in the world. I danced every dance, and 


46 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


I enjoyed it just as much as if I had ‘ shut and been a 
Bud again.’ But don’t you know it’s very bad for old 
gentlemen to be up so late ? ” 

They were mounting the stairs, and when they 
reached the library, she went in and poked her long- 
gloved hands well in over the tire on the hearth while 
she lifted her eyes to the clock. “ Oh, it isn’t so very 
late. Only five.” 

No, it’s early,” said her father with the security in 
a feeble joke which none but fathers can feel with 
none but their grown-up daughters. ‘^It’s full an 
hour yet before Matt would be getting up to feed his 
cattle, if he were in Yardley.” Hilary had given Matt 
the old family place there ; and he always liked to 
make a joke of his getting an honest living by farm- 
ing it. 

‘‘ Don’t speak of that agricultural angel ! ” said the 
girl, putting her draperies back with one hand and 
confining them with her elbow, so as to give her other 
hand greater comfort of the fire. To do better yet 
she dropped on both knees before it. 

“Was he nice?” asked the father, with confidence. 

“ Nice ! Ask all the plain girls he danced with, all 
the dull girls he talked with ! When I think what a 
good time I should have with him as a plain girl, if I 
were not his sister, I lose all patience.” She glanced 
up in her father’s face, with all the strange charm 
of features that had no regular beauty ; and tlien, 
as she had to do whenever she remembered them, 
she asserted the grace which governed every movement 


THE quality of mercy. 


47 


and gesture in her, and got as lightly to her feet as if 
she were a wind-bowed flower tilting back to its per- 
pendicular. Her father looked at her with as fond a 
delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. 
She was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of him- 
self in her plainness; though the grace was all her 
own. Her complexion was not the leathery red of 
her father’s, but a smooth and even white from cheek 
to throat. She let her loose cloak fall to the chair 
behind her, and showed herself tall and slim, with 
that odd visage of hers drooping from a perfect neck. 
“ Why,*’ she said, if we had all been horned cattle, 
he couldn’t have treated us better.” 

“ Do you hear that. Matt ? ” asked the father, as his 
son came in, after a methodical and deliberate bestowal 
of his outer garments below ; his method and his delib- 
eration were part of the joke of him in the family. 

Complaining of me for making her walk home ? ” 
he asked in turn, with the quiet which was another 
part of the joke. “I didn’t suppose you’d give me 
away, Louise.” 

“ I didn’t ; I knew I only had to wait and you would 
give yourself away,” said the girl. 

Did he make you walk home ? ” said the father. 
“ That’s the reason your hands are so cold.” 

They’re not very cold — now ; and if they were, 
I shouldn’t mind it in such a cause.” 

“ What cause ? ” 

“ Oh the general shamefulness of disusing the feet 
God had given me. But it was only three blocks, and 
4 C 


48 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


I had my arctics.’’ She moved a little away toward 
the fire again and showed the arctics on the floor where 
she must have been scuffling them off under her skirts. 

Ugh ! But it’s cold ! ” She now stretched a satin 
slipper in toward the fire. 

Yes, it’s a cold night ; but you seem to have got 
home alive, and I don’t think you’ll be the worse for 
it now, if you go to bed at once,” said her father. 

Is that a hint ? ” she asked, with a dreamy appre- 
ciation of the warmth through the toe of her slipper. 

‘‘ Not at all ; we should be glad to have you sit up 
the whole night with us.” 

‘‘Ah, now I know you’re hinting. Is it business? 

“ Yes, it’s business.” 

“ Well, I’m just in the humor for business ; I’ve 
had enough pleasure.” 

“I don’t see why Louise shouldn’t stay and talk 
business with us, if she likes. I think it’s a pity to 
keep women out of it, as if it didn’t concern them,” 
said the son. “Nine-tenths of the time it concerns 
them more than it does men.” He had a bright, 
friendly, philosophical smile in saying this, and he 
stood waiting for his sister to be gone, with a patience 
which their father did not share. He stood something 
over six feet in his low shoes, and his powerful frame 
seemed starting out of the dress-suit, which it appeared 
so little related to. His whole face was handsome and 
regular, and his full beard did not wholly hide a 
mouth of singular sweetness. 

“ Yes ; I think so too, in the abstract,” said the 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


49 


father. ‘‘ If the business were mine, or were business 
in the ordinary sense of the term — ’’ 

‘‘Why, why did you say it was business at all, 
then?” The girl put her arms round her father’s 
neck and let her head-scarf fall on the rug a little way 
from her cloak and her arctics. “ If you hadn’t said 
it was business, I should have been in bed long ago.” 
Then, as if feeling her father’s eagerness to have 
her gone, she said, “ Good night,” and gave him a 
kiss, and a hug or two more, and said “ Good night. 
Matt,” and got herself away, letting a long glove trail 
somewhere out of her dress, and stretch its weak 
length upon the floor after her, as if it were trying to 
follow her. 


VIII. 


Louise’s father, in turning to look from her toward 
his son, felt himself slightly pricked in the cheek by 
the pin that had transferred itself from her neck-gear 
to his coat collar, and Matt went about picking up the 
cloak, the arctics, the scarf and the glove. He laid 
the cloak smoothly on the leathern lounge, and ar- 
ranged the scarf and glove on it, and set the arctics 
on the floor in a sort of normal relation to it, and then 
came forward in time to relieve his father of the pin 
that was pricking him, and that he was rolling his 
eyes out of his head to get sight of. 

What in the devil is that ? ” he roared. 

“ Louise’s pin,” said Matt, as placidly as if that were 
quite the place for it, and its function were to prick 
her father in the cheek. He went and pinned it into 
her scarf, and then he said, It’s about Northwick, I 
suppose.” 

“ Yes,” said his father, still furious from the pin- 
prick. I’m afraid the miserable scoundrel is going 
to run away.” 

‘^Did you e:^pect there was a chance of that?” 
asked Matt, quietly. 

“ Expect ! ” his father blustered. ‘‘ I don’t know 
what I expected. I might have expected anything of 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


51 


him but common honesty. The position I took at the 
meeting was that our only hope was to give him a 
chance. He made all sorts of professions of ability to 
meet the loss. I didn’t believe him, but I thought 
that he might partially meet it, and that nothing was 
to be gained by proceeding against him. You can’t 
get blood out of a turnip, even by crushing the turnip.” 

That seems sound,” said the son, with his reason- 
able smile. 

I didn’t spare him, but I got the others to spare 
him. I told him he was a thief.” 

‘‘ Oh ! ” said Matt. 

“Why, wasn’t he ? ” returned his father, angrily. 

“ Yes, yes. I suppose he might be called so.” Matt 
admitted it with an air of having his reservations, which 
vexed his father still more. 

“ Very well, sir ! ” he roared. “ Then I called him 
so ; and I think that it will do him good to know it.” 
Hilary did not repeat all of the violent things he had 
said to Northwick, though he had meant to do so, 
being rather proud of them ; the tone of his son’s voice 
somehow stopped him for the moment. “ I brought 
them round to my position, and we gave him the 
chance he asked for.” 

“ It was really the only thing you could do.” 

“ Of course it was ! It was the only business-like 
thing, though it won’t seem so when it comes out that 
he’s gone to Canada. I told him I thought the best 
thing for him would be a good, thorough, railroad acci- 
dent on his way home ; and that if it were not for his 


52 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


family, for his daughter who’s been in and out here so 
much with Louise, I would like to see him handcuffed, 
and going down the street with a couple of constables.” 

Matt made no comment upon this, perhaps because 
he saw no use in criticising his father, and perhaps 
because his mind was more upon the point he men- 
tioned. “It will be hard for that pretty creature.” 

“ It will be hard for a number of creatures, pretty 
and plain,” said his father. “ It won’t break any of 
us ; but it will shake some of us up abominably. I 
don’t know but it may send one or two people to the 
wall, for the time being.” 

“ Ah, but that isn’t the same thing at all. That’s 
suffering ; it isn’t shame. It isn’t the misery that the 
sin of your father has brought on you.” 

“Well, of course not!” said Hilary, impatiently 
granting it. “ But Miss North wick always seemed to 
me a tolerably tough kind of young person. I never 
quite saw what Louise found to like in her.” 

“They were at school together,” said the son. 
“She’s a sufficiently offensive person, I fancy; or 
might be. But she sometimes struck me as a person 
that one might be easily unjust to, for that very 
reason ; I suppose she has the fascination that a proud 
girl has for a girl like Louise.” 

Hilary asked, with a divergence more apparent than 
real, “ How is that affair of hers with Jack Wilming- 
ton ? ” 

“ I don’t know. It seems to have that quality of 
mystery that belongs to all affairs of the kind when 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


53 


they hang fire. We expect people to get married, and 
be done with it, though that may not really be the way 
to be done with it.’^ 

‘‘Wasn’t there some scandal about him, of some 
kind?” 

“ Yes ; but I never believed in it.” 

“ He always struck me as something of a cub, but 
somehow he doesn’t seem the sort of a fellow to give 
the girl up because — ” 

“ Because her father is a fraud ? ” Matt suggested. 
“ No, I don’t think he is, quite. But there are always 
a great many things that enter into the matter besides a 
man’s feelings, or his principles, even. I can’t say 
what I think Wilmington would do. What steps do 
you propose to take next in the matter ? ” 

“ I promised him he shouldn’t be followed up, while 
he was trying to right himself. If we find he’s gone, 
we must give the case into the hands of the detectives, 
I suppose.” The disgust showed itself in Hilary’s 
face, which was an index to all his emotions, and his 
son said, with a smile of sympathy : 

“ The apparatus of justice isn’t exactly attractive, 
even when one isn’t a criminal. But I don’t know 
that it’s any more repulsive than the apparatus of com- 
merce, or business, as we call it. Some dirt seems to 
get on everybody’s bread by the time he’s earned it, 
or on his money even when he’s made it in large sums 
as our class do.” 

The last words gave the father a chance to vent his 
vexation with himself upon his son. “I wish you 


54 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


wouldn’t talk that walking-delegate’s rant with me, 
Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think 
you may fitly take it as a sign that I wish to be let 
alone myself.” 

‘‘I beg your pardon,” said the young man. 
didn’t wish to annoy you.” 

Don’t do it, then.” After a moment, Hilary added 
with a return to his own sense of deficiency, ‘‘The 
whole thing’s as thoroughly distasteful to me as it can 
be. But I can’t see how I could have acted otherwise 
than I’ve done. I know I’ve made myself responsible, 
in a way, for North wick’s getting off ; but there was 
really nothing to do but to give him the chance he 
asked for. His having abused it won’t change that 
fact at all; but I can’t conceal from myself that I 
half-expected him to abuse it.” 

He put this tentatively, and his son responded, “ I 
suppose that naturally inclines you to suppose he’ll 
run away.” 

“Yes.” 

“ But your supposition doesn’t establish the fact.” 

“ No. But the question is whether it doesn’t oblige 
me to act as if it had ; whether I oughtn’t, if I’ve got 
this suspicion, to take some steps at once to find out 
whether Northwick’s really gone or not, and to mix 
myself actively up in the catchpole business of his pur- 
suit, after I promised him he shouldn’t be shadowed 
in any way till his three days were over.” 

“ It’s a nice question,” said Matt, “ or rather, it’s a 
nasty one. Still, you’ve only got your fears for evi- 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 55 

dence, and you must all have had your fears before. I 
don’t think that even a bad conscience ought to hurry 
one into the catchpole business.” Matt laughed again 
with that fondness he had for his father. “ Though as 
for any peculiar disgrace in catchpoles as catchpoles, I 
don’t see it. They’re a necessary part of the adminis- 
tration of justice, as we understand it, and have it ; 
and I don’t see how a detective who arrests, say, a 
murderer, is not as respectably employed as the judge 
who sentences him, or the hangman who puts the rope 
round his neck. The distinction we make between 
them is one of those tricks for shirking responsibility 
which are practised in every part of the system. Not 
that I want you to turn catchpole. It’s all so sorrow- 
ful and sickening that I wish you hadn’t any duty at 
all in the matter. I suppose you feel at least that you 
ought to let the Board know that you have your mis- 
givings ? ” 

‘‘ Yes,” said Hilary, ruefully, with his double chin 
on his breast, I felt like doing it at once ; but there 
was my word to him! And I wanted to talk with 
you.” 

“It was just as well to let them have their night’s 
rest> There isn’t really anything to be done.” Matt 
rose from the low chair where he had been sprawling, 
and stretched his stalwart arms abroad. “ If the man 
was going he’s gone past recall by this time ; and if he 
isn’t gone, there’s no immediate cause for anxiety.” 

“ Then you wouldn’t do anything at present ? ” 

“ I certainly shouldn’t. What could you do ? ” 

C* 


56 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Yes, it might as well all go till morning, I sup- 
pose.’’ 

‘‘ Good night,” the son said, suggestively, I sup- 
pose there isn’t really anything more ? ” 

“ No, what could there be ? You had better go to 
bed.” 

And you, too, I hope, father.” 

“ Oh, I shall go to bed — as a matter of form.” 

The son laughed. I wish you could carry your 
formality so far as to go to sleep, too. I shall.” 

“ I sha’n’t sleep,” said the father, bitterly. “ When 
things like this happen, some one has to lie awake and 
think about them.” 

‘‘Well, I dare say Northwick’s doing that.” 

“I doubt it,” said Hilary. “I suspect North wick 
is enjoying a refreshing slumber on the Montreal ex- 
press somewhere near St. Albans about this time.” 

“ I doubt if his dreams are pleasant. After all, he’s 
only going to a larger prison if he’s going into exile. 
He may be on the Montreal express, but I guess he 
isn’t sleeping,” said Matt. 

“ Yes,” his father admitted. “ Poor devil ! He’d 
much better be dead.” 


IX. 


The groom who drove Miss Sue North wick down to 
the station at noon that day, came back without her 
an hour later. He brought word to her sister that she 
had not found the friend she expected to meet at the 
station, but had got a telegram from her there, and 
had gone into town to lunch with her. The man was 
to return and fetch her from the six o’clock train. 

She briefly explained at dinner that her friend had 
been up at four balls during the week, and wished to 
beg off from the visit she had promised until after the 
fifth, which was to be that night. 

I don’t see how she lives through it,” said Adeline. 

And at her age, it seems very odd to be just as fond 
of dancing as if she were a bud.” 

Louise is only twenty-three,” said Suzette. “ If 
she were married, she would be just in the heart of 
her gay e ties at that age, or even older.” 

But she isn’t married, and that makes all the dif- 
ference.” 

“ Her brother is spending the month at home, and 
she makes the most of his being with them.” 

“ Has he given up his farming ? It’s about time.” 

“ No ; not at all, I believe. She says he’s in Bos- 
ton merely as a matter of duty, to chaperon her at 


58 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


parties, and save her mother from having to go with 
her.” 

“ Well,” said Adeline, I should think he would 
want to be of some use in the world ; and if he won’t 
help his father in business, he had better help his 
mother in society.” 

Suzette sat fallen back in her chair for the moment, 
and she said as if she had not heeded, I think I will 
give a little dance Ji^re, next week. Louise can come 
up for a couple of days, and we can have it Thursday. 
We made out the list — just a few people. She went 
out with me after lunch, and we saw most of the girls, 
and I ordered the supper. Mrs. Lambert will 
matronize them ; it’ll be an old dance, rather, as far as 
the girls are concerned, but I’ve asked two or three 
buds ; and some of the young married people. It will 
be very pleasant, don’t you think ? ” 

‘Wery. Do you think Mr. Wade would like to 
come ? ” 

Suzette smiled. “ I dare say he would. I wasn’t 
thinking of him in making it, but I don’t see why he 
shouldn’t look in.” 

“ He might come to the supper,” Adeline mused 
aloud, if it isn’t one of his church days. I never can 
keep the run of them.” 

‘‘We were talking about that and we decided that 
Thursday would be perfectly safe. Louise and I 
looked it up together ; but we knew we could make 
everything sure by asking Mrs. Lambert first of all ; 
she would have been certain to object if we had made 
any mistake.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


59 


“ I’m very glad,” said Adeline. I know father 
will be glad to have Mr. Wade here. He’s taken a 
great fancy to him.” 

‘‘ Mr. Wade’s very nice,” said Suzette, coolly. “ I 
shouldn’t have liked to have it without him.” 

They left the table and went into the library, to 
talk the dance over at larger leisure. Suzette was 
somewhat sleepy from the fatigues of her escapade to 
Boston, and an afternoon spent mostly in the cold air, 
and from time to time she yawned, and said she must 
really go to bed, and then went on talking. 

Shall you have any of the South Hatboro’ peo^ 
pie ? ” her sister asked. 

“ Mrs. Munger and her tribe ? ” said Suzette, with a 
contemptuous little smile. I don’t think she would 
contribute much. Why not the Morrells ; or the 
Putneys, at once ? ” She added abruptly, I think I 
shall ask Jack Wilmington.” Adeline gave a start, 
and looked keenly at her ; but she went on quite im- 
perviously. “ The Hilary s know him. Matt Hilary 
and he were quite friends at one time. Besides,” she 
said, as if choosing now to recognize the quality of 
Adeline’s gaze, I don’t care to have Louise suppose 
there’s the shadow of anything between us any more, 
not even a quarrel.” 

Adeline gave a little sigh of relief. I’m glad that’s 
it. I’m always afraid you’ll get — ” 

To thinking about him again? You needn’t be. 
All that’s as thoroughly dead and gone as anything 
can be in this world. No,” she continued, in the tone 


60 THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 

that is more than half for one’s self in such dealings, 
whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. 
AYilmington has put an end to, long ago. It never 
was anything but a fancy, and I don’t believe it could 
have been anything else if it had ever come to the 
point.” 

I’m glad it seems so to you now, Sue,” said her 
sister, ‘‘ but you needn’t tell me that you weren’t very 
much taken with him at one time ; and if it’s going to 
begin again, I’d much rather you wouldn’t have him 
here.” 

Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. Do 
you think you shall see me at his feet before the even- 
ing is over ? But I should like to see him at mine 
for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his 
explanations.” 

I don’t believe he’s ever been bad ! ” cried Ade- 
line. ‘‘ He’s just weak.” 

Very well. I should like to hear what a man has 
to say for his weakness, and then tell him that I had 
a little weakness of my own, and didn’t think I had 
strength to endure a husband that had to be explained.” 

Ah, you’re in love with him, yet ! You shall 
never have him here in the world, after the way he’s 
treated you ! ” 

“ Don’t be silly, Adeline ! Don’t be romantic ! If 
you had ever been in love yourself, you would know 
that people outlive that as well as other things. Let’s 
see how the drawing-room will do for the dance ? ” 

She jumped from her chair and touched the electric 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


61 


button at the chimney. ‘‘ You think that nothing but 
death can kill a fancy, and yet nobody marries their 
first love, and lots of women have second husbands.” 
The man showed himself at the door, and she said to 
him in a rapid aside : “ Turn up the lights in the 
drawing-room, James,” and returned to her sister. 
‘‘ No, Adeline ! The only really enduring and undying 
thing is a slight. That lasts — with me ! ” 

Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty 
of her soul, and from the inborn New England love of 
justice, ‘‘I don’t believe he ever meant it. Sue. I 
don’t believe but what he was influenced — ” 

Suzette laughed, not at all bitterly, “ Oh, youWe in 
love with him! Well, you may have him if ever he 
offers himself to me. Let’s look at the drawing-room.*’ 
She caught Adeline round her bony waist, where each 
rib defined itself to her hand, and danced her out of 
the library, across the hall into the white and gold 
saloon beyond. Yes,” she said, with a critical look 
at the room, ‘Mt will do splendidly. We shall have to 
put down linen, of course ; but then the dancing will 
be superb — as good as a bare floor. Yes, it will be 
a grand success. Ugh ! Come out, come out, come 
out ! How deathly cold it is I ” 

She ran back into the warm library, and her sister 
followed more slowly. ‘‘ You shouldn’t think,” she 
said, as if something in Sue’s words had reminded her 
of it, ‘‘ that cominff so soon after Mrs. Newton’s little 
boy-” 

‘‘ Well, that’s like you, Adeline I To bring that up ! 


62 THE QUALITY OF MERCYo 

No, indeed ! It’ll be a whole week, nearly ; and be- 
sides lie isn't quite one of the family. What an idea ! ” 
‘‘ Of course,” her sister assented, abashed by Sue’s 
scornful surprise. 

It’s too bad it should have happened just at this 
time,” said the girl, with some relenting. When is 
it to be ? ” 

“To-morrow, at eleven,” said Adeline. She per- 
ceived that Sue’s selfishness was more a selfishness of 
words, perhaps, than of thoughts or feelings. “You 
needn’t have anything to do with it. I can tell them 
you were not very well, and didn’t feel exactly like 
coming. They will understand.” She was used to 
making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly fib like 
this seemed no harm to her. 


X. 


In the morning before her sister was astir, Adeline 
went out to the coachman’s quarters in the stabling, 
and met the mother of the dead child at the door. 

Come right in ! ” she said, fiercely, as she set it wide. 
“ I presume you want to know if there’s anything you 
can do for me ; that’s what they all ask. Well, there 
ain’t, unless you can bring him back to life. I’ve been 
up and doin’, as usual, this mornin’,” she said, and a 
sound of frying came from the kitchen where she had 
left her work to let her visitor in. We got to eat ; 
we got to live.” 

The farmer’s wife came in from the next chamber, 
where the little one lay ; she had her bonnet and 
shawl on as if going home after a night’s watching. 
She said, “ I tell her he’s better off where he’s gone ; 
but she can’t seem to sense the comfort of it.” 

“ How do you know he’s better off ? ” demanded the 
mother, turning upon her. It makes me tired to hear 
such stuff. Who’s goin’ to take more care of the child 
where he’s gone, than what his mother could ? Don’t 
you talk nonsense, Mrs. Saunders ! You don’t know 
anything about it, and nobody does. I can bear it ; 
yes, I’ve got the stren’th to stand up against death, 

but I don’t want any comfort You want to see Eh 
5 


64 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


bridge, Miss Northwick? He’s in the harness room, 
I guess. He’s got to keep about, too, if he don’t want 
to go clear crazy. One thing, he don’t have to stand 
any comfortin’. I guess men don’t say such things 
to each other as women do, big fools as they be ! ” 
Mrs. Saunders gave Miss Northwick a wink of pity 
for Mrs. Newton and expressed that she was hardly 
accountable for what she was saying. 

‘‘ He used to complain of me for lettin’ Arty get out 
into the stable among the horses ; but I guess he won’t 
be troubled that way much more,” said the mother ; 
and then something in Miss Northwick’s face seemed 
to stay her in her wild talk ; and she asked, “ Want I 
should call him for you ? ” 

No, no,” said Adeline, “ I’ll go right through to 
him, myself.” She knew the way from the coach- 
man’s dwelling into the stable, and she found Elbridge 
oiling one of the harnesses, with a sort of dogged atten- 
tion to the work, which he hardly turned from to look 
at her. ‘‘ Elbridge,” she asked, “ did you drive father 
to the depot yesterday morning? ” 

“Yes, ma’am, I did.” 

“ When did he say he would be back ? ” 

“Well, he said he couldn’t say, exactly. But I 
understood in a day or two.” 

“ Did he expect to be anywhere but Ponkwasset ? ” 
“ No, ma’am, I didn’t hear him say as he did.” 

“ Then it’s a mistake ; and of course I knew it was 
a mistake. There’s more than one Northwick in the 
world, I presume.” She laughed a little hysterically ; 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


65 


she had a newspaper in her hand, and it shook with 
the nervous tremor that passed over her. 

Why, what is it, Miss Northwick ? said Elbridge 
with a perception of the trouble in her voice through 
the trouble in his own heart. He stopped pulling the 
greasy sponge over the trace in his hand, and turned 
towards her. 

“Oh, nothing. There’s been an accident on the 
Union and Dominion Railroad ; and of course it’s a 
mistake.” 

She handed him the paper, folded to the column 
which she wished to show, and he took it between two 
finger-tips, so as to soil it as little as possible, and stood 
reading it. She went on saying, “ He wouldn’t be on 
the train if he was at Ponkwasset. I got the paper 
when I first came down stairs, but I didn’t happen to 
read the account till just now ; and then I thought I’d 
run out and see what father said to you about where 
he was going. He told us he was going to the Mills, 
too, and — ” Her voice growing more and more 
wistful, died away in the fascination of watching the 
fascination of Elbridge as he first took in the half- 
column of scare-heads, and then followed down to the 
meagre details of the dispatch eked out with double- 
leading to cover space. 

It appeared that the Northern express had reached 
Well water Junction, on the Union and Dominion line, 
several hours behind time, and after the usual stop 
there for supper, had joined the Boston train, on the 
United States and Canada, for Montreal, and had, just 


66 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


after leaving the Junction, run off the track. The 
deadly car stove got in its work ” on the wreck, and 
many lives had been lost by the fire, especially in the 
parlor car. It was impossible to give a complete list 
of the killed and wounded, but several bodies were 
identified, and among the names of passengers in the 
Pullman that of T. W, Northwick was reported, from 
a telegram received by the conductor at Well water 
asking to have a seat reserved from that point to 
Montreal. 

“ It ain’t him, I know it ain’t, Miss Northwick,” said 
Elbridge. He offered to give her the paper, but 
took another look at it before he finally yielded it. 

There’s lots of folks of the same name, I don’t care 
what it is, and the initials ain’t the ones.” 

‘‘ No,” she said, doubtfully, but I didn’t like the 
last name being the same.” 

Well, you can’t help that; and as long as it ain’t 
the initials, and you know your father is safe and 
sound at the Mills, you don’t want to worry.” 

^‘No,” said Adeline. “You’re sure he told you he 
was going to the Mills ? ” 

“Why, didn’t he tell you he was ? I don’t recollect 
just what he said. But he told me about that note he 
left for me, and that had the money in it for the 
fun’al — ” Elbridge stopped for a moment before 
he added, “ He said he’d telegraph just which train he 
wanted me to meet him when he was cornin’ back. . . . 
Why, dumn it ! I guess I must be crazy. can 

settle it in. half an hour’s time — or an hoyp Or two at 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


67 


the outside — and no need to worry about it. Tele- 
graph to the Mills and find out whether he’s there or 
not.” 

He dropped his harness, and went to the tele- 
phone and called up the Western Union operator at 
the station. He had the usual telephonic contention 
with her as to who he was, and what he wanted, but 
he got her at last to take his dispatch to Ponkwasset 
Falls, asking whether North wick was at the Mills. 

‘‘ There ! ” he said, “ I don’t believe but what 
that’ll fix it all right. And I’ll bring you in the an- 
swer myself, when it comes. Miss Northwick.” 

“I do hate to trouble you with my foolishness, 
when — 

I guess you needn’t mind about that,” said Elbridge. 
‘‘ I guess it wouldn’t make much difference to me, if 
the whole world was burnt up. Be a kind of a relief.” 
He did not mean just the sense the words conveyed, 
and she, in her preoccupation with her own anxiety, 
and her pity for him, interpreted them aright. 

She stayed to add, ‘‘I don’t know what he could 
have been on that train for, any way, do you ? ” 

No, and he wa’n’t on it ; you’ll find that out.” 

“ It’ll be very provoking,” she said, forecasting the 
minor trouble of the greater trouble’s failure. Every- 
body will wonder if it isn’t father, and we shall have 
to tell them it isn’t.” 

‘‘Well, that won’t be so bad as havin’ to tell ’em it 
is,” said Elbridge, getting back for the moment to his 
native dryness. 


68 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


‘‘ That’s true,” Adeline admitted. Don’t speak to 
anybody about it till you hear.” She knew from his 
making no answer that he would obey her, and she 
hid the paper in her pocket, as if she would hide the 
intelligence it bore from all the rest of the world. 

She let Suzette sleep late, after the fatigues of her 
day in Boston and the excitement of their talk at 
night, which she suspected had prevented the girl 
from sleeping early, Elbridge’s sympathetic incre- 
dulity had comforted her, if it had not convinced her, 
and she possessed herself in such patience as she could 
till the answer should come from the mills. If her 
father were there, then it would be all right ; and in 
the meantime she found some excuses for not believ- 
ing the worst she feared. There was no reason in the 
world why he should be on that train ; there was no 
reason why she should identify him with that T. W. 
Northwick in the burnt-up car ; that was not his name, 
and that was not the place where he would have been. 


XL 


There was trouble with the telegraph and tele- 
phone connections between Hatboro’ and Ponkwasset, 
and Adeline had to go to the funeral without an answer 
to Elbridge’s message. Below her surface interest in 
the ceremony and the behavior of the mourners and 
the friends, which nothing could have alienated but the 
actual presence of calamity, she had a nether misery 
of alternating hope and fear, of anxieties continually 
reasoned down, and of security lost the instant it was 
found. The double strain told so upon her nerves, 
that when the rites at the grave were ended, she sent 
word to the clergyman and piteously begged him to 
drive home with her. 

Why, aren't you well. Miss Northwick ? ” he asked, 
with a glance at her troubled face, as he got into the 
covered sleigh with her. 

“ Oh, yes,’’ she said, and she flung herself back 
against the cushioning and began to cry. 

‘‘ Poor Mrs. Newton’s grief has been very trying,” 
he said, gently, and with a certain serenity of smile he 
had, and he added, as if he thought it well to lure Miss 
Northwick from the minor affliction that we feel for 
others’ sorrows to the sorrow itself, “It has been a 
terrible blow to her — so sudden, and her only child.” 


70 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Oh, it isn’t that,” said Adeline, frankly. “ Have 
— have you seen the — paper this morning ? ” 

‘‘It came,” said the clergyman. “But in view of 
the duty before me, I thought I wouldn’t read it. Is 
there anything particular in it ? ” 

“No, nothing. Only — only — ” Ade.^^e had 
not been able to separate herself from the dreadful 
thing, and she took it out of the carriage pocket. 
“There has been an accident on the railroad,” she 
began firmly, but she broke down in the effort to go 
on. “ And I wanted to have you see — see — ” 
She stopped, and handed him the paper. 

He took it and ran over the account of the accident, 
and came at her trouble with an instant intelligence 
that was in itself a sort of reassurance. “ But had you 
any reason to suppose your father was on the train ? ” 
“No,” she said from the strength he gave her. 
“ That is the strange part about it. He went up to 
the Mills, yesterday morning, and he couldn’t have 
been on the train at all. Only the name — ” 

“It isn’t quite the name,” said Wade, with a gentle 
moderation, as if he would not willingly make too 
much of the difference, and felt truth to be too sacred 
to be tampered with even while it had merely the form 
of possibility. 

“No,” said Adeline, eager to be comforted, “and 
I’m sure he’s at the Mills. Elbridge has sent a dis- 
patch to find out if he’s there, but there must be some- 
thing the matter with the telegraph. We hadn’t 
heard before the funeral ; or, at least, he didn’t bring 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY, 


71 


me word ; and I hated to keep round after him 
when — ’’ 

“ He probably hadn’t heard,” said the clergyman, 
soothingly, “and no news is good news, you know. 
But hadn’t we better drive round by the station, and 
find 01 whether any answer has been — ” 

“ 0, no ! I couldn’t do that ! ” said Adeline, ner- 
vously. “ They will telephone the answer up to 
Elbridge. But come home with me, if you haven’t 
something to do, and stay with us till we — ” 

“ Oh, very willingly.” On the way the young cler- 
gyman talked of the accident, guessing that her hyster- 
ical conjectures had heightened the horror, and that 
he should make it less dreadful by exploring its facts 
with her. He did not declare it impossible her father 
should have been on the train, but he urged the ex- 
treme improbability. 

Elbridge and his wife passed them, driving rapidly 
in Simpson’s booby, which Adeline had ordered for 
their use at the funeral ; and when she got into the 
house Elbridge was waiting there for her. He began 
at once ; “ Miss Northwick, I don’t believe but what 
your father’s staid over at Springfield for something. 
He was talkin’ to me last week about sopae bosses 
there — ” 

“ Isn’t he at the Mills ? ” she demanded sharply. 

Elbridge gave his hat a turn on his hand, before he 
looked up. “Well, no, he hain’t been, yet — ” 

Adeline made no sound, but she sank down as a 

column of water sinks. 

D 


72 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


At the confusion of movements and voices that fol- 
lowed, Suzette came to the door of the library, and 
looked wonderingly into the hall, where this had hap- 
pened, with a book clasped over her finger. What 
in the world is the matter ? ’’ she asked with a sort of 
sarcastic amaze, at sight of Elbridge lifting something 
from the fioor. 

‘‘ Don’t be alarmed. Miss Suzette,” said Mr. Wade, 
“ Your sister seems a little faint, and — ” 

‘‘ It’s this sickening heat ! ” cried the girl, running 
to the door, and setting it wide. It suffocates me 
when I come in from the outside. I’ll get some 
water.” She vanished and was back again instantly, 
stooping over Adeline to wet her forehead and temples. 
The rush of the cold air began to revive her. She 
opened her eyes, and Suzette said, severely, What 
has come over you, Adeline ? Aren’t you well ? ” and 
as Adeline answered nothing, she went on: “I don’t 
believe she knows where she is. Let us get her into 
the library on the lounge.” 

She put her strength with that of the young clergy- 
man, and they carried Adeline to the lounge ; Suzette 
dispatched Elbridge, hanging helplessly about, for 
some of the women. He sent the parlor-maid, and 
did not come back. 

Adeline kept looking at her sister as if she were 
afraid of her. When she was recovered sufficiently to 
speak, she turned her eyes on the clergyman, and said 
huskily, “ Tell her.” 

Your sister has had a little fright,” he began ; and 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


73 


with his gentle eyes on the girl’s he went on to deal 
the pain that priests and physicians must give. 
“ There’s the report of a railroad accident in the morn- 
ing paper, and among the passengers — the missing 
— was one of the name of North wick — ” 

“ But father is at the Mills ! ” 

‘‘ Your sister had telegraphed before the funeral, to 
make sure — and word has come that he — isn’t 
there.” 

“ Where is the paper ? ” demanded Suzette, with a 
kind of haughty incredulity. 

Wade found it in his pocket, where he must have 
put it instead of giving it back to Adeline in the 
sleigh. Suzette took it and went with it to one of the 
windows. She stood reading the account of the acci- 
dent, while her sister watched her with tremulous 
eagerness for the help that came from her contemptu- 
ous rejection of the calamity. 

“ How absurd ! It isn’t father’s name, and he 
couldn’t have been on the train. What in the world 
would he have been going to Montreal for, at this 
time of year ? It’s ridiculous ! ” Suzette flung the 
paper down, and came back to the other two. 

I felt,” said Wade, “ that it was extremely im- 
probable — ” 

‘‘ But where,” Adeline put in faintly, “ could he 
have been if he wasn’t at the Mills ? ” 

“Anywhere in the world except Well water Junc- 
tion,” returned Suzette, scornfully. “ He may have 
stopped over at Springfield, or — ” 


74 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Yes,” Adeline admitted, “ that’s what Elbridge 
thought.” 

“ Or he may have gone on to Willoughby Junction. 
He often goes there.” 

‘‘That is true,” said the other, suffering herself to 
take heart a little. “ And he’s been talking of sell 
ing his interest in the quarries there ; and — ” 

“ He’s there, of course,” said Suzette with finality. 
“ If he’d been going farther, he’d have telegraphed us. 
He’s always very careful. I’m not in the least 
alarmed, and I advise you not to be, Adeline. When 
did you see the paper first ? ” 

“When I came down to breakfast,” said Adeline, 
quietly. 

“ And I suppose you didn’t eat any breakfast ? ” 

Adeline’s silence made confession. 

“What I think is, we’d better all have lunch,'' said 
Suzette, and she went and touched the bell at the 
chimney. “ You’ll stay with us, won’t you, Mr. 
Wade ? We want lunch at once, James,” she said to 
the man who answered her ring. “ Of course, you 
must stay, Mr. Wade, and help see Adeline back to 
her right mind.” She touched the bell again, and 
when the man appeared, “ My sleigh at once, James,” 
she commanded. “I will drive you home, Mr. Wade, 
on my way to the station. Of course I shall not leave 
anything in doubt about this silly scare. I fancy it 
will be no great difficulty to find out where father is. 
Where is that railroad guide ? Probably my father 
took it up to his room.” She ran up-stairs and came 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


75 


down with the book in her hand. Now we will 
see. I don’t believe he could get any train at Spring- 
field, where he would have to change for the Mills, 
that would take him beyond the Junction at that hour 
last night. The express has to come up from Bos- 
ton — ” She stopped and ran over the time-table of the 
route. “ Well, he could get a connecting train at the 
Junction ; but that doesn’t prove at all that he did.” 

She talked on, mocking the mere suggestion of such 
a notion, and then suddenly rang the bell once more, 
to ask sharply, “ Isn’t lunch ready yet ? Then bring 
us tea, here. I shall telegraph to the Mills again, and 
I shall telegraph to Mr. Hilary in Boston ; he will 
know whether father was going anywhere else. They 
had a meeting of the Board day before yesterday, and 
father went to the Mills unexpectedly. I shall tele- 
graph to Ponkwasset Junction, too ; and you may be 
sure I shall not come home, Adeline, till I know some- 
thing definite.” 

The tea came, and Suzette served the cups herself, 
with nerves that betrayed no tremor in the clash of 
silver or china. But she made haste, and at the sound 
of sleigh-bells without, she put down her own cup, 
untasted. 

“ Oh, must you take Mr. Wade away ” Adeline 
feebly pleaded. Stay till she comes back ! ” she 
entreated. 

Suzette faltered a moment, and then with a look at 
Mr. Wade, she gave a harsh laugh. Very well ! ” 
she said. 


76 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


She ran into the hall and up the stairs, and in an> 
other moment they heard her coming down again ; 
the outer door shut after her, and then came the flut- 
ter of the sleigh-bells as she drove away. 

Over the lunch the elder sister recovered herself a 
little, and ate as one can in the suspense of a strong 
emotion. 

“ Your sister is a person of great courage,” said the 
clergyman, as if he were a little abashed by it. 

She would never show that she’s troubled. But I 
know well enough that she’s troubled, by the way she 
kept talking and doing something every minute ; and 
now, if she hadn’t gone to telegraph, she’d — I mustn’t 
keep you here, any longer, Mr. Wade,” she broke off 
in the sense of physical strength the food had given 
her. Indeed, I mustn’t. You needn’t be anxious. 
I shall do very well, now. Yes ! I shall ! ” 

She begged him to leave her, but he perceived that 
she did not really wish him to go, and it was nearly an 
hour after Suzette drove away, before he got out of 
the house. He would not let her send him home ; 
and he walked toward the village in the still, sunny 
cold of the early winter afternoon, thinking of the 
sort of contempt with which that girl had spurned the 
notion of calamity, as if it were something to be re- 
sented, and even snubbed, in its approach to her. It 
was as if she had now gone to trace it to its source, 
and defy it there ; to stamp upon the presumptuous 
rumor and destroy it. 

Just before he reached tlie crest of the upland that 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


77 


shut out the village from him, he heard the clash of 
sleigh-bells ; a pair of horses leaped into sight, and 
came bearing down upon him with that fine throw of 
their feet, which you get only in such a direct en- 
counter. He stepped into the side track, and then he 
heard Miss Sue Northwick call to her horses and saw 
her pulling them up. She had her father’s fondness 
for horses, and the pair of little grays were a gift from 
him with the picturesque sledge they drew. The 
dasher swelled forward like a swan’s breast, and then 
curved deeply backward ; from either corner of the 
band of iron filagree at the top, dangled a red horse- 
tail. The man who had driven her to the station sat 
in a rumble behind; on the seat with Suzette was 
another young lady, who put out her hand to Wade 
with a look of uncommon liking, across the shining 
bearskin robe, and laughed at his astonishment in see- 
ing her. While they talked, the clipped grays ner- 
vously lifted and set down their forefeet in the snow, 
as if fingering it; they inhaled the cold air with 
squared nostrils, and blew it out in blasts of white 
steam. Suzette said, in, Explanation of her friend’s 
presence : Louise had seen the account, and she 

made her brother 'bring her up. They think just as 
I do, that there’s nothing of it ; one of the papers had 
the name Nordeck ; but we’ve left Mr. Hilary at the 
station, fighting the telegraph and telephone in all 
directions, and he isn’t to stop till he gets something 
positive. He’s trying Well water now.” She said all 
this very haughtily, but she added, ‘‘ The only thing 


78 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


is, I can’t understand why my father hasn’t been heard 
of at the Mills. Some one was asking for him there 
yesterday.” 

‘‘ Probably he went on to Willoughby Junction, as 
you suggested.” 

‘‘Of course he did,” said Louise. “We haven’t 
heard from there yet.” 

“ Oh, I’m not in the least troubled,” said Sue, “ but 
it’s certainly very provoking.” She lifted her reins. 
“ I’m hurrying home to let Adeline know.” 

“ She’ll be very glad,” Wade returned, as if it were 
the certainty of good news she was carrying. “ I think 
I’ll join Matt at the station,” he suggested to Louise. 

“ Do ! ” she answered. “ You can certainly manage 
something between you. Matt will be almost as glad 
of your coming as my going. I thought we were com- 
ing up here to reassure Sue, but I seem strangely 
superfluous.” 

“ You can reassure Adeline,” said Sue. She added 
to Wade, “I keep thinking what an annoyance it will 
be to my father, to have all this fuss made over him, 
I sometimes feel vexed with Adeline. Good-bye ! ” 
she called back to him as she drove away, and she 
stopped again to add, “ Won’t you come up with Mr. 
Hilary when you’ve heard something definite ? ” 

Wade promised, and they repeated their good-byes 
all round with a resolute cheerfulness. 


XII. 


The affair had been mixed up with tea and lunch, 
and there was now the suggestion of a gay return to 
tlie Northwick place and an hour or two more in that 
pleasant company of pretty and lively women, which 
Wade loved almost as well as he loved righteousness. 
He knew that there was such a thing as death in the 
world ; he had often already seen its strange, peaceful 
face ; he had just stood by an open grave ; but at 
the moment, his youth denied it all, and he swung 
along over the hard-packed roadway thinking of the 
superb beauty of Suzette Northwick, and the witchery 
of Louise Hilary’s face. It was like her, to come at 
once to her friend in this anxiety ; and he believed a 
strength in her to help bear the worst, the worst that 
now seemed so remote and impossible. 

He did not find Matt Hilary in the station ; but he 
pushed through to the platform outside and saw 
him at a little distance standing between two of the 
tracks, and watching a group of men there who were 
replacing some wornout rails with new ones. 

Matt ! ” he called to him, and Matt turned about 
and said, ‘Hlello, Caryl ! ” and yielded him a sort of 
absent-minded hand, while he kept his face turned 
smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the 
6 


80 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


rails in position, and another was driving in the spike 
that was to rivet the plate to the sleeper. He struck 
it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, free-handed 
rhythmical swing of his hammer. 

Beautiful ! Isn’t it ? ” said Matt. “ I never see 
any sort of manual labor, even the kinds that are bru- 
tified and demoralized by their association with ma- 
chinery, without thinking how far the arts still come 
short of the trades. If any sculptor could feel it, 
what a magnificent bas-relief just that thing would 
make ! ” He turned round to look at the men again : 
in their different poses of self-forgetfulness and inter- 
est in their work, they had a beauty and grace, in 
spite of their clumsy dress, which ennobled the scene. 

When Matt once more faced round, he smiled se- 
renely on his friend. Wade, who knew his temperament 
and his philosophy, was deceived for the moment. 
‘‘ Then you don’t share Miss Northwick’s anxiety about 
her father,” he began, as if Matt had been dealing 
directly with that matter, and had been giving his 
reasons for not being troubled about it. Have you 
heard any thing yet? But of course you haven’t, 
or — ” 

Matt halted him, and looked down into his face 
from his greater height with a sort of sobered cheer- 
fulness. How much do you know about Miss 
Northwick’s father ? ” 

“Very little — nothing in fact but what slie and 
her sister showed me in the morning paper. I know 
they’re in great distress about him ; I just met Miss 


I'HE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


81 


Suzette and your sister, and they told me I should find 
you at the station.’’ 

Matt began to walk on again. I didn’t know but 
you had heard some talk from the outside. I came 
off to escape the pressure of inquiry at the station; 
people had, found out somehow that I had been put in 
charge of the telegraphing when the young ladies left. 
I imagined they wouldn’t follow me if I went for a 
walk.” He put his hand through Wade’s arm, and 
directed their course across the tracks toward the 
street away from the station, where Elbridge had 
walked his horses up and down the evening he met 
North wick. “ I told them to look out for me, if they 
got anything ; I should keep in sight somewhere. 
Isn’t it a curious commentary on our state of things,” 
he went on, ‘Hhat when any man in a position of 
trust can’t be accounted for twenty-four hours after 
he leaves home, the business-like supposition is that 
he has run away with money that doesn’t belong to 
him ? ” 

“ What do you mean, Matt ? ” 

“ I mean that the popular belief in Hatboro’ seems 
to be that Northwick was on his way to Canada on the 
train that was wrecked.” 

“ Shocking, shocking ! ” said Wade. What makes 
you think they believe that ? ” 

The conjecture and speculation began in the sta- 
tion the moment Miss Northwick left it, and before 
it could be generally understood that I was there to 
represent her. I suppose there wasn’t a man among 


82 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


them that wouldn’t have trusted North wick with all 
he had, or wouldn’t have felt that his fortune was made 
if Northwick had taken charge of his money. In fact 
I heard some of them saying so before their deference 
for me shut their mouths. Yet I haven’t a doubt 
they all think he’s an absconding defaulter.” 

It’s shocking,” said Wade, sadly, “ but I’m afraid 
you’re right. These things are so common that peo- 
ple are subjected to suspicion on no kind of — ” But 
just at this juncture Matt lifted his head from the 
moment’s revery in which he seemed to have been far 
absent. 

Have you seen much of the family this winter ? ” 
“Yes, a good deal,” said Wade. “They’re not 
communicants, but they’ve been regular attendants at 
the services, and I’ve been a good deal at their house. 
They seem rather lonely ; they have very little to do 
with the South Hatboro’ people, and nothing at all 
with the villagers. I don’t know why they’ve spent 
the winter here. Of course one hears all kinds of 
gossip. The gossips at South Hatboro’ say that Miss 
Suzette was willing to be on with young Wilmington 
again, and that she kept the family here. But I place 
no faith in such a conjecture.” 

“ It has a rustic crudity,” said Matt. “ But if Jack 
Wilmington ever cared anything for the girl, now’s 
his chance to be a man and stand by her.” 

Something in Matt’s tone made Wade stop and ask, 
“ What do you mean, Matt ? Is there anything be- 
sides — ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


83 


“Yes.” Matt took a fresh grip of his friend’s arm, 
and walked him steadily forward, and kept him walking 
in spite of his involuntary tendency to come to a halt 
every few steps, and try to urge something that he 
never quite got from his tongue, against the proba- 
bility of what Matt was saying. “ I mean that these 
people are ri^ht in their suspicions.” 

“ Right?” 

“My dear Caryl, there is no doubt whatever that 
Northwick is a defaulter to the company in a very 
large amount. It came out at a meeting of the direc- 
tors on Monday. He confessed it, for he could not 
deny it in the face of the proof against him, and he 
was given a number of days to make up his shortage. 
He was released on parole: it was really the best 
thing, the wisest as well as the mercifullest, and of 
course he broke his word, and seized the first chance 
to run away. I knew all about the defalcation from 
my father just after the meeting. There is simply no 
question about it.” 

“ Gracious powers ! ” said Wade, finally helpless to 
dispute the facts which he still did not realize. “And 
you think it possible — do you suppose — imagine — 
that it was really he who was in that burning car? 
What an awful fate ! ” 

“ An awful fate ? ” asked Matt. “ Do you think 
so? Yes, yours is the safe ground in regard to a 
thing of that kind — the only ground.” 

“ The only ground ? ” 

“ I was thinking of my poor father,” said Matt. 


84 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


He said some sharp things to that wretched creature 
at the meeting of the Board — called him a thief, and 
I dare say other hard names — and told him that the 
best thing that could happen to him was a railroad 
accident on his way home.” 

^^Ah!” 

You see ? When he read the account of that ac- 
cident in the paper this morning, and found a name so 
much like Northwick’s among the victims, he was 
fearfully broken up, of course. He felt somehow as 
if he had caused his death — I could see that, though 
of course he wouldn’t admit anything of the kind.” 

Of course,” said Wade, compassionately. 

‘‘ I suppose it isn’t well to invoke death in any way. 
He is like the devil, and only too apt to come, if you 
ask for him. I don’t mean anything superstitious, and 
I don’t suppose my father really has any superstitious 
feeling about the matter. But he’s been rather a 
friend — or a victim — of that damnable theory that 
the gentlemanly way out of a difficulty like North- 
wick’s is suicide, and I suppose he spoke from asso- 
ciation with it, or by an impulse from it. He has been 
telegraphing right and left, to try to verify the reports, 
as it was his business and duty to do, anyway ; and 
he caught at the notion of my coming up here with 
Louise to see if we could be of any use to those two 
poor women.” 

“ Poor women ! ” Wade echoed. ‘‘The worst must 
fall upon them, as the worst always seems to do.” 

“ Yes, wherever a cruel blow falls there seems to be 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


85 


a woman for it to fall on. And you see what a re- 
finement of cruelty this is going to be when it reaches 
them ? They have got to know that their father met 
that awful death, and that he met it because he was 
a defaulter and was running away. I suppose the 
papers will be full of it.” 

“ That seems intolerable. Couldn’t anything be 
done to stop them ? ” 

“ Why the thing has to come out. You can keep 
happiness a secret, but sorrow and shame have to come 
out — I don’t know why, but they do. Then, when 
they come out, we feel as if the means of their pub- 
licity were the cause of them. It’s very unphilosoph- 
ical.” They walked slowly along in silence for a few 
moments, and then Matt’s re very broke out again in 
words : ‘‘ Well, it’s to be seen now whether she has the 
strength that bears, or the strength that breaks. Tlie 
way she held her head, as she took the reins and drove 
off, with poor Louise beside her palpitating with sym- 
pathy for her trouble and anxiety about her horses, 
was, yes, it was superb : there’s no other word for it. 
Ah, poor girl ! ” 

‘‘ Your sister’s presence will be a great help to 
her,” said Wade. “ It was very good of her to come.” 

‘‘ Ah, there wasn’t anything else for it,” said Matt, 
flinging his head up. “ Louise has my father’s loyalty. 
I don’t know much about her friendship with Miss 
North wick — she’s so much younger than I, and 
they came together when I was abroad — but I’ve 
fancied she wasn’t much liked among the girls, and 


86 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Louise was her champion, in a way. When Louise 
read that report, nothing would do but she must come.’’ 

“ Of course.” 

‘^But our being here must have its embarrass- 
ments for my father. It was a sacrifice for him to 
let us come.” 

“ I don’t understand.” 

“ It was he who carried through the respite the 
directors gave North wick ; and now he will have the 
appearance before some people of helping to cover up 
the miserable facts, of putting a good face on things 
while a rogue was getting away from justice. He 
might even be supposed to have some interest in get- 
ting him out of the way.” 

Oh, I don’t think any such suspicion can attach 
itself to such a man as Mr. Hilary,” said Wade, with a 
certain resentment of the suggestion even from the 
man’s son. 

“In a commercial civilization like ours any sort 
of suspicion can attach to any sort of man in a case 
like this,” said Matt. 

Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead. “ I 
can’t realize that the case is what you say. I can’t 
realize it at all. It seems like some poor sort of play, 
of make-believe. I can’t forgive myself for being so 
little moved by it. We are in the presence of a hor- 
ror that ought to make us uncover our heads and fall 
to our knees and confess our own sins to God ! ” 

“ Ah, I’m with you there ! ” said Matt, and he 
pushed his hand farther through his friend’s arm. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


87 


They were both still well under thirty, and they 
both had that zest for mere experience, any experience, 
that hunger for the knowledge of life, which youth 
feels. In their several ways they were already men 
who had thought for themselves, or conjectured, 
rather ; and they were eager to verify their specula- 
tions through their emotions. They thought a good 
deal alike in many things, though they started from 
such opposite points in their thinking ; and they both 
had finally the same ideal of life. Their intimacy was 
of as old a date as their school days ; at Harvard they 
were in the same clubs as well as the same class. 
Wade’s father was not a Boston man, but his mother 
was a Bellingham, and he was nurtured in the tradi- 
tions of Hilary’s social life. Both had broken with 
them : Wade not so much when he became a ritualist 
as Hilary when he turned his back on manufacturing. 

They were now not without a kind of pride in stand- 
ing so close to the calamity they were fated witnesses of, 
and in the midst of their sympathy they had a curios- . 
ity which concerned itself with one of the victims be- 
cause she was a young and beautiful girl. Their pity 
not so much forgot as ignored Northwick’s elder daugh- 
ter, who was a plain, sick old maid, and followed the 
younger with a kind of shrinking and dread of her 
doom which Matt tried to put into words. 

“ I assure you if I couldn’t manage to pull away 
from it at moments, I don’t see how I could stand it. 
I had a sense of personal disgrace, when I met that 
poor girl, with what I had in my mind. I felt as if I 


88 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


were taking some base advantage of her in knowing 
that about her father, and I was so glad when she 
went off with Louise and left me to struggle with my 
infamous information alone. I hurried Louise away 
with her in the most cowardly haste. We don’t any 
of us realize it, as you say. Why, just imagine ! It 
means sorrow, it means shame, it means poverty. 
They will have to leave their house, their home ; she 
will have to give up everything to the company. It 
isn’t merely friends and her place in the world ; it’s 
money, it’s something to eat and wear, it’s a roof over 
her head ! ” 

Wade refused the extreme view portrayed by his 
friend’s figures. Of course she won’t be allowed to 
come to want.” 

“ Of course. But there’s really no measuring the 
sinuous reach of a disaster like this. It strikes from 
a coil that seems to involve everything.” 

‘‘ What are you going to do if you get bad news ? ” 
asked Wade. 

Ah, I don’t know ! I must tell her, somehow ; 
unless you think that you — ” Wade gave a start 
which Matt interpreted aright ; he laughed nervously. 
“ No, no ! It’s for me to do it. I know that unless 
I can get Louise. Ah ! I wonder what that is.” 

They were walking back toward the station again, 
and Matt had seen a head and arm projected from the 
office window, and a hand waving a sheet of yellow 
paper. It seemed meant for them. They both began 
to run, and then they checked themselves ; and walked 
as fast as they could. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


89 


‘‘ We must refer the matter to your sister,” said 
Wade, “ and if she thinks best, remember that I shall 
be quite ready to speak to Miss Northwick. Or, if 
you think best, I will speak to her without troubling 
your sister.” 

“ Oh, you'YQ all right, Wade. You needn’t have 
any doubt of that. We’ll see. I wonder what there 
is in that dispatch.” 

The old station master had come out of the station 
and was hurrying to meet them with the message, now 
duly enclosed in an envelope. He gave it to Matt 
and promptly turned his back on him. 

Matt tore it open, and read : ‘‘ Impossible to iden- 
tify parlor-car passengers.” The telegram was signed 
“ Operator,” and was dated at Well water. It fell 
blankly on their tense feeling. 

‘‘ Well,” said Wade, after a long breath. “ It isn’t 
the worst.” 

Matt read it frowningly over several times ; then he 
smiled. “ Oh, no. This isn’t at all bad. It’s noth- 
ing. But so far, it’s rather comforting. And it’s 
something, even if it is nothing. Well, I suppose I’d 
better go up to Miss Northwick with it. Wait a mo^ 
ment ; I must tell them where to send if anything else 
comes.” 

I’ll walk with you as far as St. Michael’s,” said 
Wade, when they left the station. I’m going to my 
study, there.” 

They set off together, up the middle of the street, 
which gave them more elbow-room than the sidewalk 
narrowly blocked out of the snow. 


90 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


From a large store as they were passing, a small, 
dry-looking, pompous little man advanced to the mid- 
dle of the street, and stopped them. beg your 
pardon, Mr. Wade ! I beg your pardon, sir ! ” he 
said, nimbly transferring himself, after the quasi self- 
introduction, from Wade to Matt. ‘‘May I ask 
whether you have received any further information ? ’’ 
No,” said Matt, amiably, “ the only answer we 
have got is that it is impossible to identify the passen- 
gers in the parlor-car.” 

“ Ah, thank you ! Thank you very much, sir ! I 
felt sure it couldn’t be our Mr. Northwick. Er — 
good-morning, sir.” 

He bowed himself away, and went into his store 
a^ain, and Matt asked Wade, “Who in the world is 
that?” 

“ He’s a Mr. Gerrish — keeps the large store, there. 
Rather an unpleasant type.” 

Matt smiled. “He had the effect of refusing to 
believe that anything so low as an accident could 
happen to a man of Northwick’s business standing.” 

“Something of that,” Wade assented. “He wor- 
ships Northwick on the altar of material success.” 

Matt lifted his head and looked about. “ I suppose 
the whole place is simply seething with curiosity.” 

Just after they reached the side-street where Wade 
left him to go down to his church, he met Sue North- 
wick driving in her sleigh. She was alone, except for 
the groom impassive in the rumble. 

“ Have you heard anything ? ” she asked, sharply. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


91 


Matt repeated the dispatch from the operator at 
Wellwater. 

“ I knew it was a mistake,” she said, with a kind of 
resolute scorn. It’s perfectly ridiculous ! Why 
should he have been there ? I think there ought to 
be some way of punishing the newspapers for circu- 
lating false reports. I’ve been talking with the man 
who drove my father to the train yesterday morning, 
and he says he spoke lately of buying some horses at 
Springfield. He got several from a farm near there 
once. I’m going down to telegraph the farmer; I 
found his name among father’s bills. Of course he’s 
there. I’ve got the dispatch all written out.” 

“ Let me take it back to the station for you, Miss 
North wick,” said Matt. 

“ No ; get in with me here, and we’ll drive down, 
and then I’ll carry you back home. Or ! Here, Den- 
nis ! ” she said to the man in the rumble ; and she 
handed him the telegram. ‘‘Take this to the tele- 
graph-office, and tell them to send it up by Simpson 
the instant the answer comes.” 

The Irishman said, “Yes, ma’am,” and dropped 
from his perch with the paper in his hand. 

“ Get in, Mr. Hilary,” she said, and after he had 
mounted she skilfully backed the sleigh and turned 
the horses homeward. “ If I hear nothing from my 
dispatch, or if I hear wrong, I am going up to Well- 
water Junction myself, by the first train. I can’t wait 
any longer. If it’s the worst, I want to know the 
worst.” 


92 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Matt did not know what to say to her courage. So 
he said, Alone ? to gain time. 

“ Of course ! At such a time, I would rather be 
alone.’ 

At the house Matt found Louise had gone to her 
room for a moment, and he said he would like to speak 
with her there. 

She was lying on the lounge, when he announced 
himself, and she said, Come in,” and explained, 1 
just came off a moment, to give my sympathies a little 
rest. And then, being up late so many nights this 
week. What have you heard ? ” 

Nothing, practically. Louise, how long did you 
expect to stay ? ” 

I don’t know. I hadn’t thought. As long as I’m 
needed, I suppose. Why ? Must you go back ? ” 

‘‘ No ^ not exactly. ” 

“ Not exactly ? What are you driving at ? ” 

Why, there’s nothing to be found out by tele- 
graphing. Some one must go up to the place where the 
accident happened. She sees that, and she wants to 
go. She can’t realize at all what it means to go there. 
Suppose she could manage the journey, going alone, 
and all that ; what could she do after she got there ? 
How could she go and look up the place of the acci- 
dent, and satisfy herself whether her father was — ” 

“ Matt ! ” shrieked his sister. If you go on, you 
will drive me wild. She mustn’t go ; that’s all there 
is of it. You mustn’t think of letting her go.” She 
sat up on the lounge in expression of her resolution on 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


93 


this point. “ She must send somebody — some of 
their men. She mustn't go. It’s too hideous I 

“ No,” said Matt, thoughtfully. “ I shall go.” 

“You!” 

“ Why not ? I can be at the place by four or five 
in the morning, and I can ascertain all the facts, and 
be able to relieve this terrible suspense for her.” 

“For both of them,” suggested Louise. “It must 
be quite as bad for that poor, sick old maid.” 

“Why, of course,” said Matt, and he felt so much 
ashamed of having left her out of the account that he 
added, “ I dare say it’s even worse for her. She’s 
seen enough of life to realize it more.” 

“ Sue was his favorite, though,” Louise returned. 
“ Of course you must go. Matt. You couldn’t do less ! 
It’s magnificent of you. Have you told her, yet, that 
you would go ? ” 

“ Not yet. I thought I would talk it over with 
you, first.” 

“ Oh, I approve of it. It’s the only thing to do. 
And I had better stay here till you come back — ” 

“ Why, no ; I’m not sure.” He came a little nearer 
and dropped his voice. “ You’d better know the 
whole trouble, Louise. There’s great trouble for them 
whether he’s dead or alive. There’s something wrong 
in his accounts with the company, and if he was on 
that train he was running away to Canada to escape 
arrest.” 

He could see that only partial intelligence of the 
case reached her. 


94 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Then if he’s killed, it will all be hushed up. I 
see ! It makes you hope he’s killed.” 

Matt gave a despairing groan. ‘‘ If he’s killed it 
makes it just so much the worse. The defalcation has 
to come out, any way.” 

When must it come out ? ” 

“ A good many people know of it ; and such things 
are hard to keep. It may come out — some rumor of 
it — in the morning papers. The question is whether 
you want to stay till they know it here ; whether it 
would be wise, or useful.” 

‘‘Certainly not! I should want to kill anybody 
that was by when such a thing as that came out, and 
I should despise Sue Northwick if she let me get 
away alive. I must go at once ! ” 

She slid herself from the lounge, and ran to the 
glass, where she put up a coil of hair in the knot 
it had escaped from. 

“ I had my doubts,” Matt said, “ about letting you 
come here, without telling you just what the matter 
was ; but mother thought you would insist upon coin- 
ing, any way, and that you would be embarrassed.” 

“ Oh, that was quite right,” said Louise. “ The 
great thing now is to get away.” 

“ I hope you won’t let her suspect — ” 

“ Well, I think you can trust me for that, Matt,” 
said Louise, turning round upon him, with a hair-pin 
in her mouth, long enough to give him as sarcastic a 
glance as she could. If her present self-possession 
was a warrant of future performance, Matt thought 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


95 


he could trust her; but he was afraid Louise had 
not taken in the whole enormity of the fact ; and he 
was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or 
ever afterwards, fully imagine it. It may be doubted 
whether she conceived of it as other than a great 
trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept 
from her friend. 

Matt went down stairs and found Sue North wick in 
the library. 

“I feel perfectly sure,’’ she said, ‘Hhat we shall 
hear of my father at Springfield. One of the horses 
he got there has gone lame, and it would be quite like 
him to stop and look up another in the place of it on 
the same farm.” 

The logic of this theory did not strike Matt, but the 
girl held her head in such a strong way, she drew her 
short breaths with such a smoothness, she so visibly 
concealed her anxiety in the resolution to believe her- 
self what she said that he could not refuse it the 
tribute of an apparent credence. ‘‘Yes, that certainly 
ipakes it seem probable.” 

“ At any rate,” she said, “ if I hear nothing from 
him there, or we get no news from Well water, I shall 
go there at once. I’ve made up my mind to that.” 

“ I shouldn’t wish you to go alone. Sue,” Adeline 
quavered. Her eyes were red, and her lips swollen as 
if she had been crying ; and now the tears came with 
her words. “ You could never get there alone in the 
world. Don’t you remember, it took us all day to get 

to Well water the last time we went to Quebec ? ” 

7 E 


96 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Sue gave her sister a severe look, as if to quell her 
open fears at least, and Matt asked aimlessly, “ Is it 
on the way to Quebec ? ’’ 

Sue picked up the railroad guide from the desk 
where she had left it. “ Yes ; it is, and it isn’t.’’ She 
opened the book and showed him the map of the road. 
“The train divides at Well water, and part goes to 
Montreal and part to Quebec. There are all sorts of 
stops and starts on the Quebec branch, so that you 
don’t arrive till next morning, but you get to Montreal 
in five or six hours. But the whole thing seems per- 
fectly frantic. I don’t see why we pay the slightest 
attention to it ! Of course^ papa has stayed over in 
Springfield for something ; only he’s usually so careful 
about telegraphing us if he changes his plans — ” 

She faltered, and let the book drop. Matt picked 
it up for her, and began to look at the time-table, at 
first to hide the pain he felt at the self-discourage- 
ment in which she ended, and then to see if he might 
not somehow be useful to her. “ I see that a train 
from Boston meets the Springfield train at Wellwater.” 

“ Does there ? ” She bent to look over the book 
with him, and he felt the ungovernable thrill at being 
near the beauty of a woman’s face which a man never 
knows whether to be ashamed of or glad of, but which 
he cannot help feeling. “ Then perhaps I had better 
go by way of Boston. What time does it start ? Oh, 
I see ! Seven, thirty. I could get that train — if I 
don’t hear from him at Springfield. But I know I 
shall hear.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


97 


A stir of drapery made them aware of Louise at the 
library door, Suzette went toward her, ^^Are you 
going?” she asked, without apparently sharing the 
surprise Matt felt at seeing his sister with her hat and 
gloves on, and her jacket over her arm. 

‘‘Yes, I’m going, Sue. I just ran up to see you — 
I had to do that — but we both know I’m of no use 
here ; and so we won’t make any pretences.” Louise 
spoke very steadily, almost coldly; her brother did 
not quite know what to make of her ; she was pale, 
and she looked down, while she spoke. But when 
she finished buttoning the glove she was engaged with, 
she went up and put both her hands in Suzette’s. “ I 
don’t need to tell you that I’m going just to get myself 
out of your way. It isn’t a time for ornamental friend- 
shipping, and you’ve got all the good you could out of 
seeing me, and knowing that I’m anxious with you. 
That’s about all there is of it, and I guess we’d better 
not spin it out. But remember. Sue, whenever you 
need me, when you really want me, you can send for 
me, and if I don’t come again till you do, you’ll know 
that I’m simply waiting. Will you remember that — 
whatever happens ? ” 

Matt gave a long tacit sigh of relief. 

“Yes, I will, Louise,” said Suzette. They kissed 
each other as if in formal ratification of their compact, 
which meant so much more to one of them than it 
could to the other. 

“ Come, Matt ! ” said Louise. 

She added hastily, to nrevent insistence against her 


98 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


plan, that they would have time to walk to the station, 
and she wished to walk. Then Matt said, I will see 
you aboard the train, and then I’ll come back and wait 
till you hear from Springfield, Miss Suzette.” 

That is a good idea,” said Louise. 

But,” Adeline urged tremulously, sha’n’t you be 
afraid to go to Boston alone ? It’ll be dark by the time 
you get there ! ” 

“ The journey can’t be very dangerous,” said Louise, 
“ and when I arrive, I shall put myself in charge of a 
faithful Boston hackman, and tell him I’m very valu- 
able, and am to be taken the best of care of. Then I 
shall be set down at our door in perfect safety.” 

They all had the relief of a little laugh ; even Ade- 
line joined reluctantly in it. 

When they were once free of the house. Matt said, 
I wonder whether she will remember, after the worst 
comes, what you said, and whether she will trust you 
enough to turn to us ? ” 

I don’t know. Probably she will be too proud at 
first. But I shall come, whether she asks me or not. 
If they had relations or connections, as everybody else 
has, it would be different. But as it is — ” 

Yes, of course,” said Matt. 

I wish I could realize that Sue is fond of him, as 
we are of papa. But I can’t. He always made me 
feel creepy ; didn’t he you ? ” 

“ He was a secret person. But as far as I had any- 
thing to do with him at the Mills, when I was there, I 
found him square enough. He was a country person.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 99 

I suppose Sue’s priae is countrified/’ said Louise. 

Matt went on, His secrecy may have been only a 
sort of shyness ; Heaven knows I don’t want to judge 
him. I suppose that that slow deliberation of his was 
an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, 
we see him now in the light of his rascality, poor 
man, and most of his traits seem ugly.” 

They had a little time after they reached the sta- 
tion, and they walked up and down the platform, talk- 
ing, and Matt explained how his father might be glad 
to have him go to Well water and settle the question 
whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It 
would be a great relief for him to know. He tried to 
make out that he was going from a divided motive. 

Oh, you needn’t be at the trouble to say all that 
to me. Matt,” said Louise. I don’t blame you for 
wanting to go, even out of kindness.” 

‘‘ No, I suppose there’s no guilt attaching to a thing 
of that kind,” Matt answered. 

There were a good many loungers about the sta- 
tion, young men and girls, released from the shops for 
the day ; in such towns they find the station an agree- 
able resort, and enjoy a never-failing excitement in 
the coming and going of the trains. They watched 
the Hilarys, as they walked, with envy of that some- 
thing distinguished which both of them had. They 
were both tall and handsomely made, and they had 
the ease before their fellow-beings which perhaps 
comes as much from the life-long habit of good clothes 
as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against 


100 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


whatever would separate him from his kind, but he 
could not help carrying himself like a swell, for all 
that ; and Louise did not try to help it, for her part. 
She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality she 
now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black 
fur down the front of the jacket and around it at the 
hips ; the skirt, which fell plain to her feet, had a bor- 
der of fur there, and it swirled and swayed with her 
long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor 
girls who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest 
almost as painfully a young man with a thin, delicate 
face, whom she noticed looking at her ; she took him 
at first for one of those educated or half-educated 
operatives, who are complicating the labor problem 
more and more. He was no better dressed than others 
in the crowd, and there was no reason why he should 
not be a hat-shop or a shoe-shop hand, and yet, at a 
second glance, she decided that he was not. He stood 
staring at her with a studious frown, and with the 
faint suggestion of a sneer on his clean-shaven, fine 
lips ; but she knew that he was admiring her, how- 
ever he might be hating her, and she spoke to Matt 
about him as they turned from him in their walk and 
promised to point him out. But when they came up 
again to where he had been standing, he was gone. 
The train came in, and Louise got aboard, and Matt 
made his way into the station, and went to ask the 
operator in the telegraph office if she had got anything 
for Miss Northwick. 

She said, Something just come. I was waiting for 
the hack to send it up.’^ 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


101 


‘‘ Oh, I will take it, if you please. I am going back 
to Mr. Northwick’s,” said Matt. 

“All right.’’ 

Matt took the dispatch, and hurried out to find 
some means of getting quickly to Miss North wick 
with it. There was no conveyance about the station, 
and he started up the street at a gait which was little 
short of a run, and which exposed him to the ridicule 
of such small boys as observed his haste, in their inter- 
vals of punging. One, who dropped from the runner 
of a sleigh which came up behind him, jeered him for 
the awkwardness with which he floundered out of its 
way in the deep snow of the roadside. The sleigh was 
abruptly halted, and Sue North wick called from it, 
“ Mr. Hilary ! I couldn’t wait at home ; and I’ve just 
been at the depot by the lower road. You have a dis- 
patch ? ” 

“ Yes, I have a telegram.” 

“ Oh, give it to me ! ” 

He withheld it a moment. “ I don’t know what it 
is. Miss Northwick. But if isn’t what you expected, 
will you let — will you allow me — ” 

As if she did not know what she was doing, she 
caught the dispatch from his hand, and tore it open. 
“ Well,” she said, “ I knew it. He hasn’t been there ; 
now I shall go to Well water.” She crumpled the tele- 
gram nervously in her hand, and made a motion to lift 
the reins. 

Matt put his hand on her wrist. “ You couldn’t. 
You — you must let me go.” 


102 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“You?’’ 

“ Me. I can get into Boston in time for that half- 
past-seven train, and I can do all the things when I 
get to Well water that you couldn’t do. Come ; be 
reasonable ! You must see that what I propose is 
best. I solemnly promise you that nothing shall be 
left undone, or omitted or forgotten, that could set 
your mind at rest. Whatever you would wish done, I 
will do. Go home ; your sister needs you ; you need 
yourself ; if you have a trial to meet greater than this 
suspense, which you’ve borne with such courage, you 
want all your strength for it. I beg you to trust me 
to do this for you. I know that it seems recreant to 
let another go in your place on such an errand, but it 
really isn’t so. You ought to know that I wouldn’t 
offer to go if I were not sure that I could do all that 
you could do, and more. Come! Let me go for 
you ! ” 

He poured out his reasons vehemently, and she sat 
like one without strength to answer. When he 
stopped, she still waited before she answered simply, 
almost dryly, “ Well,” and she gave no other sign of 
assent in words. But she turned over the hand, on 
which he was keeping his, and clutched his hand hard ; 
the tears, the first she had shed that day, gushed into 
her eyes. She lifted the reins and drove away, and 
he stood in the road gazing after her, till her sleigh 
vanished over the rise of ground to the southward. 


XIII. 


The pale light in which Matt Hilary watched the 
sleigh out of sight thickened into early winter dusk 
before his train came and he got off to Boston. In 
the meantime the electrics came out like sudden 
moons, and shed a lunar ray over the region round 
about the station, where a young man, who was in the 
habit of describing himself in print as “ one of The 
Boston Events^ young men,’’ found his way into an eat- 
ing-house not far from the track. It had a simple, 
domestic effect inside, and the young man gave a sigh 
of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There 
was a woman there who had a very conversable air, a 
sort of eventual sociability, as the young man realized 
when she looked up from twitching the white, clean 
cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in rows 
on either side of the room. 

She finally reached the table where the young man 
had taken a chair for his overcoat and hat, and was 
about taking another for himself. 

“ Well,” he said, ‘‘let’s see. No use asking if 
you’ve got coffee ? ” He inhaled the odor of it com- 
ing from the open door of another room, with a deep 
breath. 

“ Baked beans ? ” 

E* 


104 THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 

‘‘Yes.’’ 

“Well, I don’t think there’s anything much better 
than baked beans. Do you ? ” 

“Well, not when you git ’em the woman 

admitted. “i?i7good.” 

“ And what’s the matter with a piece of mince pie ? ” 

“ I don’t see’s there’s any great deal. Hot ? ” 

“ Every time.” 

“I thought so,” said the woman. “We have it both 
ways, but I’d as soon eat a piece of I don’t know what 
as a piece o’ cold mince pie.” 

“We have mince pie right along at our house,” said 
the young man. “ But I guess if I was to eat a piece 
of it cold, my wife would have the doctor round inside 
of five minutes.” 

The woman laughed as if for joy in the hot mince- 
pie fellowship established between herself and the 
young man. “Well, I guess she need to. Nothin’ else 
you want ? ” She brought the beans and coffee, with 
a hot plate, and a Japanese paper napkin, and she said, 
as she arranged them on the table before the young 
man, “ Your pie’s warmin’ for you ; I got you some 
rolls; they’re just right out the oven; and here’s 
some the best butter I ever put a knife to, if I do say 
so. It’s just as good and sweet as butter can be, if it 
didrCt come from the North wick place at a dollar a 
pound.” 

“ Well, now, I should have thought you’d have used 
the Northwick butter,” said the young man with 
friendly irony. 


I'HE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


105 


You know the North wick butter ? ’’ said the woman, 
charmed at the discovery of another tie. 

“ Well, my wife likes it for cooking,” said the young 
man. “We have a fancy brand for the table.” 

The woman laughed out her delight in his pleas- 
antry. “ Land ! I’ll bet you grumble at it, too ! ” she 
said, with a precipitate advance in intimacy which he 
did not disallow. 

“Well, I’m pretty particular,” said the young man. 
“ But I have to be, to find anything to find fault with 
in the way my wife manages. I don’t suppose I shall 
be able to get much more Northwick butter, now.” 

“ Why not ? ” 

“ Why, if he was killed in that accident — ” 

“ Oh, I guess there ain’t anything to that,” said the 
woman. “I guess it was some other Northwick. 
Their coachman — Elbridge Newton — was tollin’ my 
husband that Mr. Northwick had stopped over at 
Springfield to look at some bosses there. He’s always 
buyin’ more bosses. I guess he must have as much as 
eighty or ninety bosses now. I don’t place any de- 
pendence on that report.” 

“ That so ? ” said the young man. “ Why, what 
did that fellow mean, over at the drug store, just now, 
by his getting out for Canada ? ” 

“ What fellow ? ” 

“ Little slim chap, with a big black moustache, and 
blue eyes, blue and blazing, as you may say.” 

“Oh, — Mr. Putney! That’s just one of his jokes. 
He’s always down on Mr. Northwick.” 


106 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Then I suppose he’s just gone up to Ponkwasset 
about the trouble there.” 

“ Labor trouble ? ” 

“ I guess so.” 

The woman called toward an open door at the end 
of the room, “ William ! ” and a man in his shirt sleeves 
showed himself. “ You heard of any labor trouble to 
Mr. Northwick’s mills?” 

“ JSb, I don’t believe there is any,” said the man. 
He came forward inquiringly to the table where his 
wife was standing by the Events' young man. 

‘‘Well, I’m sorry,” said the young man, “but it 
shows that I haven’t lost so much in missing Mr. 
Northwick, after all. I came up here from Boston to 
interview him for our paper about the labor troubles.” 

“ I want to know ! ” said the hostess. “ You an edi- 
tor ?” 

“ Well, I’m a reporter — same thing,” the young 
man answered. “ Perhaps you’ve got some troubles 
of your own here in your shops ? ” 

“No,” said the host, “I guess everybody’s pretty 
well satisfied here in Hatboro’.” He was tempted to 
talk by the air of confidence which the Events' young 
man somehow diffused about him, but his native Yankee 
caution prevailed, and he did not take the lead offered 
him. 

“ Well,” said the young man, “ I noticed one of your 
citizens over at the drug store that seemed to be pretty 
happy.” 

“Oh, yes; Mr. Putney. I heard you tollin’ my 
wife.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


107 


Who is Mr. Putney, any way ? asked the Events^ 
man. 

“ Mr. Putney ? ” the host repeated, with a glance 
at his wife, as if for instruction or correction in case 
he should go wrong. He’s one of the old Hatboro’ 
Putneys, here.” 

“ All of ’em preserved in liquor, the same way ? ” 

“Well, no, I can’t say as they are.” The host 
laughed, but not with much liking, apparently. ' His 
wife did not laugh at all, and the young man perceived 
that he had struck a false note. 

“ Pity,” he said, “ to see a man like that, goin’ that 
way. He said more bright things in five minutes, 
drunk as he was, than I could say in a month on a 
strict prohibition basis.” 

The good understanding was restored by this ready 
self-abasement. “ Well, I d’ know as you can say that, 
exactly,” said the hostess, “but he is bright, there 
ain’t any two ways about it. And he ain’t always 
that way you see him. It’s just one of his times, now. 
He has ’em about once in every four or five months, 
and the rest part he’s just as straight as anybody. 
It’s like a disease, as I tell my husband.” 

“ I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain’t 
any lawyer could go ahead of him, well, not in this 
town,” said the husband. 

“ Seems to be pretty popular as it is,” said the young 
man. “ What makes him so down on Mr. Northwick ? ” 

“ Well, I dunno,” said the host, “ what it is. He’s 
always been so. I presume it’s more the kind of a man 
Mr. Northwick is, than what it is anything else.” 


108 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


‘‘ Why, what kind of a man is Mr . Northwick, any 
way?” the young man asked, beginning to give his 
attention to the pie, which the woman had now 
brought. “ He don’t seem to be so popular. What’s 
the reason.” 

^‘Well, I don’t know as I could say, exactly. I 
presume, one thing, he’s only been here summers till 
this year, since his wife died, and he never did have 
much to do with the place, before.” 

* What’s he living here for this winter ? Econo- 
mizing ? ” 

“ No ; I guess he no need to do that,” the host 
answered. 

His wife looked knowing, and said with a laugh, I 
guess Miss Sue Northwick could tell you if she was a 
mind to.” 

Oh, I see,” said the reporter, with an irreverence 
that seemed to be merely provisional and held subject 
to instant exchange for any more available attitude. 

Young man in the case. Friendless minister whose 
slippers require constant attention ? ” 

“ I guess he ain’t very friendless,” said the hostess, 
‘‘ as far forth as that goes. He’s about the most popu- 
lar minister, especially with the workin’ folks, since 
Mr. Peck.” 

‘‘ Who was Mr. Peck ? ” 

‘‘ Well, he was the one that was run over by the 
cars at the depot here two or three years back. Why, 
this house was started on his idea. Sort of co-opera- 
tion at first ; we run it for the Social Union.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


103 


^‘And the co-operation petered out/’ said the re- 
porter making a note. “ Always does ; and then you 
took it, and began to make mpney. Standard history 
of co-operation.” 

“ I guess we ain’t gettin’ rich any too fast,” said the 
hostess, dryly. 

‘‘ Well, you will if you use the Northwick butter. 
What’s the reason he isn’t popular here when he is 
here? Must spend a good deal of money on that 
big place of his ; and give work.” 

‘‘ Mr. Putney says it’s corruptin’ to have such a 
rich man in the neighborhood ; and he does more harm 
than good with his money.” The hostess threw out 
the notion as if it were something she had never been 
quite able to accept herself, and would like to see its 
effect upon a man of the reporter’s wide observation. 
“ He thinks Hatboro’ was better off before there was a 
single hat-shop or shoe-shop in the place.” 

‘‘ And the law offices had it all to themselves,” said 
the young man; and he laughed. “Well, it was a 
halcyon period. What sort of a man is Mr. North- 
wick, personally ? ” 

The woman referred the question to her husband, 
who pondered it a moment. “ Well, he’s a kind of a 
close-mouthed man. He’s never had anything to do 
with the Hatboro’ folks much. But I never heard 
anything against him. I guess he’s a pretty good 
man.” 

“ Wouldn’t be likely to mention it round a great 
deal if he was going to Canada. Heigh? Well, I’m 


110 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


sorry I can’t see Mr. Northwick, after all. With 
these strikes in the mills everywhere, he must have 
some light to throw on the labor question generally. 
Poor boy, himself, I believe ? ” 

‘‘I don’t believe his daughters could remember 
when,” said the hostess, sarcastically. 

“That’s so ? Well, we are apt to lose our memory 
for dates as we get on in the world, especially the 
ladies. Ponkwasset isn’t on the direct line of this 
road, is it ? ” He asked this of the host, as if it 
followed. 

“No, you got to change at Springfield, and take 
the Union and Dominion road there. Then it’s on a 
branch.” 

“Well, T guess I shall have to run up and see Mr. 
Northwick, there. What did you say the young man’s 
name was that’s keeping the Northwick family here 
this winter ? ” He turned suddenly to the hostess, 
putting up his note-book, and throwing a silver dollar 
on the table to be changed. “ Married man myself, 
you know.” 

“ I guess I hain’t mentioned any names,” said the 
woman in high glee. Her husband went back to the 
kitchen, and she took the dollar away to a desk in the 
corner of the room, and brought back the change. 

“ Who’d be a good person to talk with about the 
labor situation here ? ” the young man asked, in 
pocketing his money. 

“ I d’ know as I could hardly tell,” said the hostess 
thoughtfully. “ There’s Colonel Marvin, he’s got the 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Ill 


largest shoe-shop ; and some the hat-shop folks, most 
any of ’em would do. And then there’s Mr. Wil- 
mington that owns the stocking mills ; him or Mr. 
Jack Wilmington, either one ’d be good. Mr. Jack ’d 
be the best, I guess. Or I don’t suppose there’s any- 
buddy in the place ’d know more, if they ’d a mind to 
talk, than Mrs. Wilmington ; unless it was Mis’ Doc- 
ter Morrell.” 

‘‘ Is Mr. Jack their son ? ” asked the reporter. 

Land ! Why she ain’t a day older, if she’s that. 
He’s their nephew.” 

‘‘ Oh, I see : second wife. Then he's the young 
man, heigh ! ” 

The hostess looked at the reporter with admiration. 
‘‘Well, you do beat the witch. If he hain’t, I guess 
he might ’a’ b’en.” 

The reporter said he guessed he would take another 
piece of that pie, and some more coffee if she had itj 
and before he had finished them he had been allowed 
to understand that if it was not for his being Mrs. 
Wilmington’s nephew Mr. Jack would have been Miss 
North wick’s husband long ago ; and that the love lost 
between the two ladies was not worth crying for. 

The reporter, who had fallen into his present call- 
ing by a series of accidents not necessarily of final 
result in it, did not use arts so much as instincts in its 
exercise. He liked to talk of himself and his own 
surroundings, and he found that few men, and no 
women could resist the lure thrown out by his sincere 

expansiveness. He now commended himself to the 
8 


112 ' THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 

hostess by the philosophical view he took of the pop> 
ular belief that Mrs. Wilmington was keeping her 
nephew from marrying any one else so as to marry 
him herself when her husband died. He said that if 
you were an old man and you married a young woman 
he guessed that was what you had got to expect. 
This gave him occasion to enlarge upon the happiness 
to be found only in the married state if you were fitly 
mated, and on his own exceptional good fortune in it. 

He was in the full flow of an animated confidence 
relating to the flat he had just taken and furnished in 
Boston, when the door opened, and the pale young 
man whom Louise Hilary had noticed at the station, 
came in. 

The reporter broke off with a laugh of greeting. 
‘‘ Hello, Maxwell ! You onto it, too ? ’’ 

^^Onto what?” said the other, with none of the 
reporter’s effusion. 

‘‘This labor-trouble business,” said the reporter, 
with a wink for him alone. 

“ Pshaw, Pinney ! You’d grow a bush for the 
pleasure of beating about it.” Maxwell hung his hat 
on a hook above the table, but sat down fronting Pin- 
ney with his overcoat on ; it was a well-worn over- 
coat, irredeemably shabby at the buttonholes. “ I’d 
like some tea,” he said to the hostess, “ some English 
breakfast tea, if you have it ; and a little toast.” He 
rested his elbows on the table, and took his head be- 
tween his hands, and pressed his Angers against his 
temples. 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


113 


Headache ? ’* asked Pinney, with the jocose sym- 
pathy men show one another’s sufferings, as if they 
could be joked away. “ Better take something sub- 
stantial. Nothing like ham and eggs for a headache.” 

The other unfolded his paper napkin. “ Have you 
got anything worth while ? ” 

“ Lots of public opinion and local color,” said Pin- 
ney. ‘‘ Have you ? ” 

“ I’ve been half crazy with this headache. I sup- 
pose we brought most of the news with us,” he sug- 
gested. 

“ Well, I don’t know about that,” said Pinney. 

I do. You got your tip straight from headquar- 
ters. I know all about it, Pinney, so you might as 
well save time, on that point, if time’s an object with 
you. They don’t seem to know anything here ; but 
the consensus in Hatboro’ is that he was running 
away.” 

“ The what is ? ” asked Pinney. 

‘‘The consensus.” 

“ Anything like the United States Census ? ” 

“ It isn’t spelt like it.” 

Pinney made a note of it. “ I’ll get a head-line out 
of that. I take my own wherever I find it, as George 
Washington said.” 

“ Your own, you thief ! ” said Maxwell, with sar- 
donic amusement. “ You don’t know what the word 
means.” 

“ I can make a pretty good guess, thank you,” said 
Pinney, putting up his book. 


114 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Do you want to trade ? ’’ Maxwell asked, after his 
tea came, and he had revived himself with a sip or 
two. 

Any scoops ? ’’ asked Pinney, warily. Any- 
thing exclusive ? ” 

‘‘ Oh, come ! ” said Maxwell. ‘‘ No, I haven’t ; and 
neither have you. What do you make mysteries for ? 
I’ve been over the whole ground, and so have you. 
There are no scoops in it.” 

I think there’s a scoop if you want to work it,’^ 
.said Pinney, darkly. 

Maxwell received the vaunt with a sneer. “ You 
ought to be a detective — in a novel.” He buttered 
his toast and ate a little of it, like a man of small 
appetite and invalid digestion. 

I suppose you’ve interviewed the family ? ” sug- 
gested Pinney. 

‘‘ No,” said Maxwell, gloomily, “ there are some 
things that even a space-man can’t do.” 

‘‘ You ought to go back on a salary,” said Pinney, 
with compassion and superiority. You’ll ruin your- 
self trying to fill space, if you stick at trifles.” 

“ Such as going and asking a man’s family whether 
they think he was burnt up in a railroad accident, and 
trying to make copy out of their emotions ? Thank 
you, I prefer ruin. If that’s your scoop, you’re wel- 
come to it.” 

They’re not obliged to see you,” urged Pinney. 
“ You send in your name and — ” 

‘‘ They shut the door in your face, if they have the 
presence of mind.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


115 


Well ! What do you care if they do ? It’s all in 
the way of business, anyhow. It’s not a personal 
thing.” 

A snub’s a pretty personal thing, Pinney. The 
reporter doesn’t mind it, but it makes the man’s face 
burn.” 

“ Oh, very well ! If you’re going to let uncleanly 
scruples like that stand in your way, you’d better re- 
tire to the poet’s corner, and stay there. You can fill 
that much space, any way ; but you are not built for 
a reporter. When are you going to Boston ? ” 

‘‘ Six, fifteen. I’ve got a scoop of my own.” 

‘‘What is it ? ” asked Pinney, incredulously. 

“ Come round in the morning, and I’ll tell you.” 

“ Perhaps I’ll go in with you, after all. I’ll just 
step out into the cold air, and see if I can harden my 
cheek for that interview. Your diffidence is infectious, 
Maxwell.” 


XIV. 


PiNNEY was really somewhat dashed by Maxwell’s 
attitude, both because it appealed to the more delicate 
and generous self, which he was obliged to pocket so 
often in the course of business, and because it made 
him suspect that Maxwell had already interviewed 
Northwick’s family. They would be forewarned, in 
that case, and would, of course, refuse to see him. 
But he felt that as a space-man, with the privilege of 
filling all the space he chose with this defalcation, his 
duty to his family required him to use every means 
for making copy. 

He encouraged himself by thinking of his wife, and 
what she was probably doing at that moment in their 
flat in Boston, and he was feeling fairly well when he 
asked for Miss North wick at the door of the great 
wooden palace. He had time to take in its character- 
istics, before James, the inside-man, opened the door 
and scanned him for a moment with a sort of baffled 
intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his 
appearance gave no proof that he was or was not an 
agent, a pedler in disguise, or a genteel mendicant 
of the sort he was used to detecting and deterring. 

“ I don’t know, sir. I’ll go and see.” He let rather 
than invited Pinney in, and in his absence^ the repre- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


117 


sentative of the Events made note of the interior, both 
of the hall which he had been allowed to enter, and of 
the library, where he found himself upon his own re- 
sponsibility. The inside-man discovered him there 
with his back to the fire, when he returned with his 
card still in his hand. 

Miss Northwick thinks it’s her father you wish to 
see. He’s not at home.” 

Yes, I knew that. I did wish to see Mr. North- 
wick, and I asked to see Miss Northwick because I 
knew he wasn’t at home.” 

. ‘‘ Oh ! ” The man disappeared, and after another 
interval Adeline came in. She showed the trepida- 
tion she felt at finding herself in the presence of an 
interviewer. 

Will you sit down ? ” she said, timidly, and she 
glanced at the card which she had brought back this 
time. It bore the name of Lorenzo A. Finney, and 
in the left hand corner the words Representing the 
Boston Events. Mr. Finney made haste to reassure 
her by a very respectful and business-like straightfor- 
wardness of manner; he did not forbid it a certain 
shade of authority. 

‘‘ I am sorry to disturb you. Miss Northwick. I 
hoped to have some conversation with you in regard to 
this — this rumor — accident. Can you tell me just 
when Mr. Northwick left home ? ” 

“ He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, quite 
early,” said Adeline. She was in the rise of hope 
which she and Suzette both felt from the mere fact 


118 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


that Matt Hilary was on the way to hunt the horrible 
rumor to its source ; it seemed to her that he must 
extinguish it there. She wanted to tell this friendly- 
looking reporter so ; but she would not do this with- 
out Suzette’s authority. Suzette had been scolding 
her for not telling her what was in the paper as soon 
as she read it in the morning ; and they were both so 
far respited for the moment from their fear, as to have 
had some words back and forth about the propriety of 
seeing this reporter at all. Adeline was on her most 
prudent behavior. 

Did you expect him back soon when he left ? ’’ 
Finney asked respectfully. 

“ Oh, no ; he said he wouldn’t be back for some 
days.” 

‘‘ It’s several hours to Pbnkwasset, I believe ? ” sug- 
gested Finney. 

^‘Yes, three or four. There is one train, at half- 
past-twelve, I think,” said Miss Northwick, with a 
glance at the clock, that takes you there in three 
hours.” 

‘‘The early train doesn’t connect right through, 
then?” 

“ No ; my father would have to wait over at Spring- 
field. He doesn’t often take the early train ; and so 
we thought, when we found he wasn’t at the Mills, 
that he had stopped over a day at Springfield to buy 
some horses from a farmer there. But we’ve just 
heard that he didn’t. He may have run down to New 
York ; he often has business there. We don’t place 


THE QUALITY OF MF:RCY. 


119 


any reliance on that story ” — she gasped the rest out 
— “ about — that accident.” 

“ Of course not,” said Pinney with real sympathy. 
‘Mt’s just one of those flying rumors — they get the 
names all mixed up, those country operators.” 

“They spelled the name two ways in different 
papers,” said Adeline. “ Father had no earthly busi- 
ness up that way ; and he always telegraphs.” 

“ I believe the Mills are on the line of the Union 
and Dominion Road, are they not ? ’’ Pinney fell into 
the formal style of his printed questionings. 

“ Yes, they are. Father could get the Northern 
express at Springfield, and drive over from Ponk- 
wasset Junction ; the express doesn’t stop at the 
Falls.” 

“I see. Well, I won’t trouble you any farther. 
Miss Northwick. I hope you’ll find out it’s all a mis- 
take about — ” 

“ Oh, I know it is ! ” said Adeline. “ A gentleman 
— -a friend of ours — has just gone up to Wellwater to 
see about it.” 

“ Oh, well, that’s good,” said Pinney. “ Then you’ll 
soon have good news. I suppose you’ve telegraphed ? ” 

“ We couldn’t get anything by telegraph. That is 
the reason he went.” 

It seemed to Pinney that she wished to tell him 
who went; but she did not tell him; and after wait- 
ing for a moment in vain, he rose and said, “ Well, I 
must be getting back to Boston. I should have been 
up here to see your father about these labor troubles 
F 


120 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


night before last, if I'd taken my wife’s advice. I 
always miss it when I don’t,” he said, smiling. 

There is no reason why a man should acquire merit 
with other women by seeming subject to his wife or 
dependent upon her ; but he does. They take it as a 
sort of tribute to themselves, or to the abstract woman ; 
their respect for that man rises ; they begin to honor 
him ; their hearts warm to him. Finney’s devotion to 
his wife had already been of great use to him, on 
several occasions, in creating an atmosphere of trust 
about him. He really could not keep her out of his 
talk for more than five minutes at a time ; all topics 
led up to her sooner or later. 

When he now rose to go. Miss North wick said, 
“ I’m sorry my father isn’t at home, and I’m sorry I 
can’t give you any information about the troubles.” 

‘‘ Oh, I shall go to the Mills, to-morrow,” he inter- 
rupted cheerily. Her relenting emboldened him to 
say, You must have a beautiful place, here, in sum- 
mer, Miss North wick.” 

‘‘/like it all times of the year,” she answered. 
“ We’ve all been enjoying the winter so much ; it’s 
the first we’ve spent here for a long time.” She felt 
a strange pleasure in saying this; her reference to 
their family life seemed to reassure her of its unbroken 
continuity, and to warrant her father’s safety. 

“ Yes,” said Finney, “ I knew you had let your 
house in town. I think my wife would feel about it 
just as you do ; she’s a great person for the country, 
and if it wasn’t for my work on the paper, I guess I 
sh’d have to live there,” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


121 


Miss North wick took a mass of heavy-headed jacque- 
minot roses from the vase where they drooped above 
the mantel, and wrapping them in a paper from the 
desk, stiffly offered them to Pinney. “ Won’t you 
carry these to your wife ? ” she said. This was not 
only a recognition of Finney’s worth in being so fond 
of his wife, but a vague attempt at propitiation. She 
thought it might somehow soften the heart of the 
interviewer in him, and keep him from putting any- 
thing in the paper about her. She was afraid to ask 
him not to do so. 

“Oh, thank you,” said Pinney. “ I didn’t mean to 
— it’s very kind of you — I assure you.” He felt 
very queer to be remanded to the purely human basis 
in relation to these people, and he made haste to get 
away from that interview. He had nothing to blame 
himself for, and yet he now suddenly somehow felt to 
blame. In the light of the defaulter’s home life, 
Northwick appeared his victim. Pinney was not going 
to punish him, he was merely going to publish him : but 
all the same, for that moment, it seemed to him that 
he was Northwick’s persecutor, and was hunting him 
down, running him to earth. He wished that poor 
old girl had not given him those flowers ; he did not 
feel that he could take them to his wife ; on the way 
back to the station he stepped aside from the road and 
dropped them into the deep snow. 

His wife met him at the door of their flat, eager to 
know what success he had ; and at sight of her his 
spirits rose again, and he gave her an enthusiastic 
synopsis of what he had done. 


122 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


She flung herself on his knees, where he sat, and 
embraced him. “ Ren, you’ve done splendidly ! And 
I know you’ll beat the Abstract clear out of sight. Oh, 
Ren, Ren ! ” She threw her arms round his neck 
again, and the happy tears started to her eyes. “ This 
will give you any place on the paper you choose to 
ask for ! Oh, I’m the happiest girl in the world.” 

Pinney gave her a joyful hug. “ Yes, it’s all right. 
There are ninety-nine chances to one that he was 
going to Canada. There’s a big default, running up 
into the hundred thousands, and they gave him a 
chance to make up his shortage — it’s the old story. 
I’ve got just the setting I wanted for my facts, and 
now, as soon as Manton gives us the word to go 
ahead — ” 

“ Wait till Manton gives the word ! ” cried Mrs. 
Pinney. Well, you shall do no such thing, Ren. 
We won’t wait a minute.” 

Pinney broke out into a laugh, and gave her another 
hug for her enthusiasm, and explained, between laugh- 
ing at her and kissing her, why he had to wait ; that 
if he used the matter before the detective authorized 
him, it would be the last tip he would ever get from 
Manton. “We shan’t lose anything. I’m going to 
commence writing it out, now. I’m going to make 
it a work of art. Now, you go and get me some cof- 
fee, Hat. There isn’t going to be any let up on this 
till it’s all blocked out, any way ; and I’m going to 
leave mighty few places to fill hi, I can tell you.” He 
pulled off his coat, and sat down at his desk. 


THE QUALITV OE MERCY. 


123 


His wife stopped him. “ You’d better come out 
into tlie kitchen, and work on the table there. It’s 
biofser than this desk.” 

“Don’t know but I had,” said Pinney. He 
gathered up his work and followed her out into the 
cosy little kitchen, where she cooked their simple 
meals, and they ate them. “ Been living on tea since 
I been gone ? ” He pulled open the refrigerator 
built into the wall, and glanced into it. “ Last night’s 
dinner all there yet ! ” 

“You know I don’t care to eat when you’re away, 
Ren,” she said, with a pathetic little mouth. 

Pinney kissed her and then he sat down to his work 
again ; and when he was tired with writing, his wife 
took the pen and wrote from his dictation. As they 
wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it, 
of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacu- 
lar defaulter which grew from their hands ; and they 
enjoyed the impersonality which enables us to judge 
and sentence one another in this world, and to do jus- 
tice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen 
Northwick’s home, and faced his elderly, invalid 
daughter, was moved to use him with a leniency which 
he would not otherwise have felt. He recognized a 
merit in this forbearance of his, and once, towards the 
end of his work, when he was taking a little rest, he 
said : “ Reporters get as much abuse as plumbers ; but 
if people only knew what we kept back, perhaps they 
would sing a different tune. Of course, it’s a tempta- 
tion to describe his daughter, poor old thing, and give 


124 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


the interview in full, but I don’t quite like to. I’ve 
got to cut it down to the fact that she evidently hadn’t 
the least idea of the defalcation, or why he was on the 
way to Canada. Might work a little pathos in with 
that, but I guess I mustn’t ! ” 

His wife pushed the manuscript away from her, and 
flung down the pen. ‘‘ Well, Ren, if you go on talk- 
ing in that way, you’ll take the pleasure out of it for 
me ; I can tell you that much. If I get to thinking 
of his family, I can’t help you any more.” 

“ Pshaw ! ” said Pinney. “ The facts have got to 
come out, any way, and I guess they won’t be handled 
half as mercifully anywhere else as I shall handle 
’em.” He put his arms round her, and pulled her 
tight up to him. ‘‘Your tender-heartedness is going 
to be the ruin of me yet. Hat. If it hadn’t been for 
thinking how you’d have felt, I should gone right up 
to Well water, and looked up that accident, myself, on 
the ground. But I knew you’d go all to pieces, if I 
wasn’t back at the time I said, and so I didn’t go.” 

“ Oh, what a story ! ” said the young wife, fondly, 
with her adoring eyes upon him. “ I shouldn’t have 
cared, I guess, if you’d never come back.” 

“ Shouldn’t you ? How many per cent of that am 
I going to believe ? ” he asked, and he drew her to 
him again in a rapture with her pretty looks, and the 
love he saw in them. 

Pinney was a handsome little fellow himself, with 
a gay give-and-take air that had always served him 
well with women, and that, as his wife often told him, 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


126 


had made her determine to have him the first time she 
saw him. 

This was at the opening of the Promontory House, 
two summers before, when Pinney was assigned to 
write the affair up for the Events, She had got her first 
place as operator in the new hotel ; and he brought in 
a despatch for her to send to Boston just as she was 
going to shut up the office for the night, and go in to 
see the dancing in the main dining-room, and perhaps 
be asked to dance herself by some of the clerks. 

At the sound of a pencil tapping on the ledge of the 
little window in the cast-iron filagree wall of her den, 
she turned quickly round ready to cry with disappoint- 
ment ; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes, and 
his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over 
his lip, under his short, straight nose, and a funny 
cleft ill his chin, she felt more like laughing, somehow, 
as she had since told him a hundred times. He wrote 
back to her from Boston, on some pretended business ; 
and they began to correspond, as they called it ; and 
they were engaged before the summer was over. They 
had never yet tired of talking about that first meeting, 
or of talking about themselves and each other in any 
aspect. They found out, as soon as they were en- 
gaged, and that sort of social splendor which young 
people wear to each other’s eyes had passed, that they 
were both rather simple and harmless folks, and they 
began to value each other as being good. This tern 
dency only grew upon them with the greater intimacy 
of marriage. The chief reason for thinking that they 


126 


I’HE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


were good was that they loved each other so much ; 
she knew that he was good because he loved her ; and 
he believed that he must have a great deal of good in 
him, if such a girl loved him so much. They thought 
it a virtue to exist solely for one another as they did ; 
their mutual devotion seemed to them a form of un- 
selfishness. They felt it a great merit to be frugal 
and industrious that they might prosper; they pros- 
pered solely to their own advantage, but the advan- 
tage of persons so deserving through their frugality 
and industry seemed a kind of altruism ; it kept them 
in constant good humor with themselves, and content 
with each other. They had risked a great deal in 
getting married on Finney’s small salary, but appar- 
ently their courage had been rewarded, and they were 
not finally without the sense that their happiness had 
been achieved somehow in the public interest. 


4 


XV. 


Maxwell’s headache went off after his cup of tea, 
but when he reached the house in Clover Street, where 
he had a room in the boarding-house his mother kept, 
he was so tired that he wanted to go to bed. He told 
her he was not tired ; only disappointed with his after- 
noon’s work. 

“I didn’t get very much. Why, of course, there 
was a lot of stuff lying round in the gutters that I can 
work up, if I have the stomach for it. You’ll see it 
in Finney’s report, whether I do it or not. Finney 
thinks it’s all valuable material. I left him there 
interviewing the defaulter’s family, and making mate- 
rial out of their misery. I couldn’t do that.” 

“ I shouldn’t want you to, Brice,” said his mother. 
“ I couldn’t bear to have you.” 

“ Well, we’re wrong, both of us, from one point of 
view,” said the young fellow. “ As Finney says, it’s 
business to do these things, and a business motive 
ought to purify and ennoble any performance. Fin- 
ney is getting to be a first-class reporter ; he’ll be a 
managing editor and an owner, and be refusing my 
work in less than ten years.” 

“ I hope you’ll be out of such work long before 

that,” said the mother. 

9 * 


128 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


I’m likely to be out of all kinds of work before 
that, if I keep on at this gait. Pinney hasn’t got the 
slightest literary instinct : he’s a wood-chopper, a sta- 
ble-boy by nature ; but he knows how to make copy, 
and he’s sure to get on.” 

“ Well, you don’t want to get on in his way,” the 
mother urged soothingly. 

‘‘ Yes ; but I’ve got to get on in his way while I’m 
trying to get on in my own. I’ve got to work eight 
hours at reporting for the privilege of working two at 
literature. That’s how the world is built. The first 
thing is to earn your bread.” 

“Well, you do earn yours, my son — and no one 
works harder to earn it.” 

“ Ah, but it’s so damned dirty when I’ve earned it.” 

“ Oh, my son ! ” 

“ Well, I won’t swear at it. That’s stupid, too ; as 
stupid as all the rest.” He rose from the chair he 
had dropped into, and went toward the door of the 
next room. “ I must beautify my person with a clean 
collar and cuffs. I’m going down to make a call on 
the Back Bay, and I wish to leave a good impression 
with the fellow that shows me the door when he finds 
out who I am and what I want. I’m going to inter- 
view Mr. Hilary on the company’s feelings towards 
their absconding treasurer. What a dose! He’ll 
never know I hate it ten times as bad as he does. 
But it’s my only chance for a scoop.” 

“I’m sure he’ll receive you well, Brice. He must 
see that you’re a gentleman.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


129 


“ No, I’m not a gentleman, mother,” the son inter- 
rupted harshly from the room where he was modifying 
his linen. I’m not in that line of business. But 
I’m like most people in most other lines of business : I 
intend to be a gentleman as soon as I can afford it. I 
shall have to pocket myself as usual, when I interview 
Mr. Hilary. Perhaps he isn’t a gentleman, either. 
There’s some consolation in that. I should like to 
write an article some day on business methods and 
their compatibility with self-respect. But Mr. Ricker 
wouldn’t print it.” 

“ He’s very kind to you, Brice.” 

“ Yes, he’s as kind as he dares to be. He’s the 
oasis in the desert of my life ; but the counting-room 
simoom comes along and dries him up, every now and 
then. Suppose I began my article by a study of the 
counting-room in independent journalism ? ” 

Mrs. Maxwell had nothing to say to this suggestion, 
but much concerning the necessity of wearing the 
neck-muffler, which she found her son had not had on 
all day. She put it on for him now, and made him 
promise to put it on for himself when he left the house 
where he was going to call. 

The man who came to the door told him that Mr. 
Hilary was not at home, but was expected shortly, and 
consented to let him come in and wait. He tried to 
classify Maxwell in deciding where to let him wait ; 
his coat and hat looked like a chair in the hall ; his 
pale, refined, rather haughty face, like the drawing- 
room. The man compromised on the library, and led 
him in there. 


130 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Louise rose upright on the lounge, where she had 
thrown herself, after dinner, to rest, in the dim light, 
and think over the day’s strange experience, and 
stared at him helplessly. For her greater ease and 
comfort, she had pushed off her shoes, and they had 
gone over the foot of the lounge. She found herself 
confronted with the contumacious-looking workman 
she had noticed at the station in Hatboro’, with those 
thin, mocking lips, and the large, dreamy eyes that 
she remembered. 

The serving-man said, Oh, I didn’t know you 
were here. Miss,” and stood irresolute. The gentle- 
man wishes to see your father.” 

‘‘ Will you sit down ? ” she said to Maxwell. My 
father will be in very soon, I think.” She began to 
wonder whether she could edge along unobserved to 
where her shoes lay, and slip her feet into them. But 
for the present she remained where she was, and not 
merely because her shoes were off and she could not 
well get away, but because it was not in her nature 
not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. 
She was as far as any woman can be from coquetry, 
but she could not see any manner of man without try- 
ing to please him. I’m sorry he’s isn’t here,” she 
said, and then, as there seemed nothing for him to 
answer, she ventured, It’s very cold out, isn’t it ? ” 
It’s grown colder since night-fall,” said Maxwell. 

He remembered her and she saw that he did, and 
this somehow promoted an illogical sense of acquaint- 
ance with him. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


131 


“ It seems/’ she ventured farther, very unusual 
weather for the beginning of February.” 

“ Why, I don’t know,” said Maxwell, with rather 
more self-possession than she wished him to have, so 
soon. I think we’re apt to have very cold weather 
after the January thaw.” 

‘‘ That’s true,” said Louise, with inward wonder 
that she had not thought of it. His self-possession 
did not comport with his threadbare clothes any more 
than his neat accent and quiet tone comported with 
the proletarian character she had assigned him. She 
decided that he must be a walking-delegate, and that 
he had probably come on mischief from some of the 
workpeople in her father’s employ ; she had never 
seen a walking-delegate before, but she had heard 
much dispute between her father and brother as to his 
usefulness in society ; and her decision gave Maxwell 
fresh interest in her mind. Before he knew who 
Louise was, he had made her represent the million- 
naire’s purse-pride, because he found her in Hilary’s 
house, and because he had hated her for a swell, as 
much as a young man can hate a pretty woman, when 
he saw her walking up and down the platform at 
Hatboro’. He looked about the rich man’s library 
with a scornful recognition of its luxury. His disdain, 
which was purely dramatic, and had no personal direc- 
tion, began to scare Louise ; she wanted to go away, 
but even if she could get to her shoes without his no- 
ticing, she could not get them on without making a 
scraping noise on the hard-wood floor. She did not 


132 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


know what to say next, and her heart warmed with 
gratitude to Maxwell when he said, with no great rele- 
vancy to what they had been saying, but with much 
to what he had in mind, I don’t think one realizes 
the winter, except in the country.” 

Yes,” she said, “ one forgets how lovely it is out 
of town.” 

“ And how dreary,” he added. 

Oh, do you feel that ? ” she asked, and she said to 
herself, We shall be debating whether summer is 
pleasanter than winter, if we keep on at this rate.” 

‘‘ Yes, I think so,” said Maxwell. He looked at a 
picture over the mantel, to put himself at greater 
ease, and began to speak of it, of the color and draw- 
ing. She saw that he knew nothing of art, and felt 
only the literary quality of the picture, and she was 
trying compassionately to get the talk away from it, 
when she heard her father’s step in the hall below. 

Hilary gave a start of question, when he looked 
into the library, that brought Maxwell to his feet. 
“ Mr. Hilary, I’m connected with the Daily Abstract^ 
and I’ve come to see if you are willing to talk with me 
about this rumored accident to Mr. Northwick.” 

“ No, sir ! No, sir ! ” Hilary stormed back. “ I 
don’t know any more about the accident, than you do ! 
I haven’t a word to say about it. Not a word ! Not 
a syllable ! I hope that’s enough ? ” 

“ Quite,” said Maxwell, and with a slight bow to 
Louise, he went out. 

Oh, papa ! ” Louise moaned out, “ how could you 
treat him so ? ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


133 


Treat him so ? Why shouldn’t I treat him so ? 
Confound his impudence ! What does he mean by 
thrusting himself in here and taking possession of my 
library ? Why didn’t he wait in the hall ? ” 

“ Patrick showed him in here. He saw that he 
was a gentleman ! ” 

Saw that he was a gentleman ? ” 

‘‘ Yes, certainly. He is very cultivated. He’s not 
— not a common reporter at aZ/.' ” Louise’s voice 
trembled with mortification for her father, and pity 
for Maxwell, as she adventured this assertion from 
no previous experience of reporters. It was shocking 
to feel that it was her father who had not been the 
gentleman. ‘‘You — you might have been a little 
kinder, papa ; he wasn’t at all obtrusive ; and he only 
asked you whether you would say anything. He 
didn’t persist.” 

“I didn’t intend he should persist,” said Hilary. 
His fire of straw always burnt itself out in the first 
blaze ; it was uncomfortable to find himself at vari- 
ance with his daughter, who was usually his fond and 
admiring ally ; but he could not give up at once. “ If 
you didn’t like the way I treated him, why did you 
stay ? ” he demanded. “ Was it necessary for you to 
entertain him till I came in? Did he ask for the 
family ? What does it all mean ? ” 

The tears came into her eyes, and she said with in- 
dignant resentment : “ Patrick didn’t know I was here 
when he brought him in ; I’m sure I should have been 
glad to go, when you began raging at him, papa, if I 


134 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


could. It wasn’t very pleasant to hear you. I won’t 
come any more, if you don’t want me to. I thought 
you liked me to be here. You said you did.” 

Her father blustered back : Don’t talk nonsense. 
You’ll come, just as you always have. I suppose,” he 
added, after a moment, in which Louise gathered up 
her shoes, and stood with them in one hand behind 
her, a tall figure of hurt affection and wounded pride, 
“ I suppose I might have been a little smoother with 
the fellow, but I’ve had twenty reporters after me to- 
day, and between them, and you, and Matt, in all this 
bother, I hardly know what I’m about. Didn’t Matt 
see that his going to Well water in behalf of North- 
wick’s family must involve me more and more ? ” 

‘‘I don’t see how he could help offering to go, 
when he found Suzette was going alone. He couldn’t 
do less.” 

‘‘ Oh, do less ! ” said Hilary, with imperfectly sus- 
tained passion. He turned, to avoid looking at Louise, 
and his eyes fell on a strange-looking note-book on the 
table where Maxwell had sat. “ What’s this ? ” 

He took it up, and Louise said, “ He must have left 
it.” And she thought, Of course he will come back 
for it.” 

“Well, I must send it to him. And I’ll — I’ll 
write him a note,” Hilary groaned. 

Louise smiled eager forgiveness. “ He seemed very 
intelligent, poor fellow, in some ways. Didn't you 
notice what a cultivated tone he had ? It’s shocking 
to think of his having to go about and interview peo- 
ple, and meet all kinds of rebuffs.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


135 


“ I i^uess you’d better not waste too much sympathy 
on him,” said Hilary, with some return to his grudge. 
‘‘ Oh, I didn’t mean you^ papa,” said Louise, sweetly. 
The door-bell rang, and after some parley at the 
threshold, Patrick came up to say, “ The gentleman 
that was just here thinks he left his note-book, he — ” 
Hilary did not let him get the words out; ‘‘Oh, 
yes, show him up ! Here it is.” He ran half down 
the stairs himself to meet Maxwell. 


XVI. 


Louise stole a glance at herself across the room in 
the little triptych mirror against one of the shelves. 
Her hair was not tumbled, and she completed her 
toilet to the eye by dropping her shoes and extending 
the edge of her skirt over them where she stood. 

Her father brought Maxwell in by the door, and 
she smiled a fresh greeting to him. “We — I had 
just picked your note-book up. I — I’m glad you 
came back, I — was a little short with you a mo- 
ment ago. I — I — Mayn’t I offer you a cigar ? ” 

“ No, thanks. I don’t smoke,” said Maxwell. 

“ Then a glass of — It’s pretty cold out ! ” 

“ Thank you ; I never drink.” 

“ Well, that’s good ! That’s — sit down ; sit down ! 
— that’s a very good thing. I assure you, I don’t 
think it’s the least use, though I do both. My boy 
doesn’t, he’s a pattern to his father.” 

In spite of Hilary’s invitation Maxwell remained on 
foot, with the effect of merely hearing him out as he 
went on. 

“I — I’m sorry I haven’t anything to tell about 
that accident. I’ve been telegraphing all day, with- 
out finding out anything beyond the fact as first re- 
ported; and now my son’s gone up to Well water, to 


THE QUALITY OF MEUCY. 


137 


look it up on tlie ground. It may have been our Mr. 
Kortliwick, or it may not. May I ask how much you 
know ? ” 

‘‘I don't know that I’m quite free to say,” an 
swered Maxwell. 

“ Oh ! ” 

‘‘ And I didn’t expect you to say anything unless 
you wished to make something known. It’s a matter 
of business.” 

‘‘Exactly,” said Hilary. “But I think I might 
been a little civiller in saying what I did. The ru- 
mor’s been a great annoyance to me ; and I like to 
share my annoyances with other people. I suppose 
your business often brings you in contact with men of 
that friendly disposition ? Heigh ? ” Hilary rolled 
the cigar he was about to light between his lips. 

“ We see the average man,” said Maxwell, not at 
all flattered from his poise by Hilary’s apologies. “ It’s 
a bore to be interviewed ; I know that from the bore it 
is to interview.” 

“ I dare say that’s often the worst part of it,” said 
Hilary, lighting his cigar, and puffing out the first 
great clouds. “Well, then, I*may congratulate my- 
self on sparing you an unpleasant duty. I didn’t 
know I should come off so handsomely.” 

There seemed nothing more to say, and Maxwell 
did not attempt to make conversation. Hilary offered 
him his hand, and he said, as if to relieve the parting 
of abruptness, “If you care to look in on me again, 
later on, perhaps — ” 


138 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Thank you,” said Maxwell, and he turned to go. 
Then he turned back, and after a moment’s hesitation, 
bowed to Louise, and said very stiffly, Good-even- 
ing ! ” and went out. 

Louise fetched a deep breath. “Why didn’t you 
keep him longer, papa, and find out all about him? ” 

“ I think we know all that’s necessary,” said her 
father, dryly. “ At least he isn’t on my conscience 
any longer ; and now I hope you’re satisfied.” 

“ Yes — yes,’' she hesitated. “ You don’t think you 
were too patronizing in your reparation, papa ? ” 

“ Patronizing ? ” Hilary’s crest began to rise. 

“ Oh, I don’t mean that ; but I wish you hadn’t let 
him see that you expected him to leap for joy when 
you stooped to excuse yourself.” 

Hilary delayed, for want of adequate terms, the vio- 
lence he was about to permit himself. “ The next 
time, if you don’t like my manner with people, don’t 
stay, Louise.” 

“ I knew you wanted me to stay, papa, to see how 
beautifully you could do it ; and you did do it beauti- 
fully. It was magnificent — perhaps too magnifi- 
cent.” She began to laugh and to kiss away the 
vexation from her father’s face, keeping her hands 
behind her with her shoes she had picked up again, in 
them, as she came and leaned over him, where he sat. 

“ And did I want you to stay and entertain him 
here till I came in ? ” he demanded, to keep from being 
mollified too soon. 

“ No,” she faltered. “ That was a work of neces- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


139 


sity. He looked so sick and sad, that lie appealed to 
my sympathy, and besides — Do you think I could 
trust you with a secret, papa ? ” 

“ What are you talking about ? ” 

^‘Why, you see I thought he was a walking-dele- 
gate at first.” 

“And was that the reason you stayed ? ” 

“ No. That was what frightened me, and then in- 
terested me. 1 wanted to find out what they were 
like. But that isn’t the secret.” 

“ It’s probably quite as important,” Hilary growled. 
“ Well, you see it’s such a good lesson to me ! I 
had slipped off my shoes when I was lying down, and 
I couldn’t get away, he came in so suddenly.” 

“And do you mean to tell me, Louise, that you 
were talking to that reporter all the time in — ” 

“ How should he know it ? You didn’t know it 
yourself, papa. I couldn’t get my shoes on after he 
came, of course ! ” She brought them round before 
her in evidence. 

“ AVell, it’s scandalous, Louise, simply scandalous ! 
I never come in after you’ve been here without find- 
ing some part of your gear lying round — hair-pins, or 
gloves, or ribbons, or belts, or handkerchiefs, or some- 
thing — and I won’t have it. I want you to understand 
that I think it’s disgraceful. I’m ashamed of you.” 

“ Oh, no ! Not ashamed, papa ! ” 

“Yes, I am! ” said her father; but he had to relent 
under her look of meek imploring, and say, “or I 
ought to be. I don't see how you could hold up your 
head.” 


140 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ I held it very high up. When you haven’t got 
your shoes on — in company — it gives you a sort of 
— internal majesty ; and 1 behaved very loftily. But 
it’s been a fearful lesson to me, papa ! ” She made 
her father laugh, and then she flung herself upon him, 
and kissed him for his amiability. 

She said at the end of this rite, “He didn’t seem 
much impressed even after you had apologized, do you 
think, papa ? ” 

“ No, he didn’t,” Hilary grumbled. “ He’s as stiff- 
necked as need be.” 

“Yes,” said Louise, thoughtfully. “He must be 
proud. How funny proud people are, papa ! I can’t 
understand them. That was what always fascinated 
me with Suzette.” 

Hilary’s face saddened as it softened. “Ah, poor 
thing ! She’ll have need of all her pride, now.” 

“ You mean about her father,” said Louise, sobered 
too. “ Don’t you hope he’s got away ? ” 

“What do you mean, child? That would be a 
very rascally wish in me.” 

“Well, you’d rather he had got away than been 
killed ? ” 

“ Why, of course, of course,” Hilary ruefully as- 
sented. “ But if Matt finds he wasn’t — in the acci- 
dent, it’s my business to do all I can to bring him to 
justice. The man’s a thief.” 

“ Well, then, /hope he’s got away.” 

“ You mustn’t say such things, Louise.” 

“ Oh, no^ papa ! Only think them.” 


XVII. 


Hilary had to yield to the pressure on him and 
send detectives to look into the question of North- 
wick’s fate at the scene of the accident. It was a 
formal violation of his promise to Northwick that he 
should have three days unmolested ; but perhaps the 
circumstances would have justified Hilary to any busi- 
ness man, and it could really matter nothing to the 
defaulter dead or alive. In either case he was out of 
harm’s way. Matt, all the same, felt the ghastliness 
of being there on the same errand with these agents 
of his father, and reaching the same facts with them. 
At moments it seemed to him as if he were tacitly 
working in agreement with them, for the same pur- 
pose as well as to the same end ; but he would not let 
this illusion fasten upon him ; and he kept faith with 
Suzette in the last degree. He left nothing undone 
which she could have asked if he had done ; he in- 
vented some quite useless things to do, and did them, 
to give his conscience no cause against him afterwards. 
The fire had left nothing but a few charred fragments 
of the wreck. There had been no means of stopping 
it, and it had almost completely swept away the cars 
in which it had broken out. Certain of the cars to 
the windward were not burnt ; these lay capsized be- 


142 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


side the track, bent and twisted, and burst athwart, 
fantastically like the pictures of derailed cars as Matt 
had seen them in the illustrated papers ; the locomo- 
tive, pitched into a heavy drift, was like some dead 
monster that had struggled hard for its life. Where 
the fire had raged, there was a wide black patch in the 
whiteness glistening everywhere else ; there were 
ashes, and writhen iron-work ; and bits of charred 
wood-work ; but nothing to tell who or how many had 
died there. It was certain that the porter and the 
parlor-car conductor were among the lost ; and his list 
of passengers had perished with the conductor ; there 
was only left with the operator the original of that 
telegram, asking to ’have a chair reserved in the Pull- 
man from Wellwater, and signed with Northwick’s 
name, but those different initials, which had given 
rise to the report of his death. 

This was the definite fact which Matt could carry 
back with him to Northwick’s family, and this they 
knew already. It settled nothing ; it left the ques- 
tion of his death just where it was before. But Matt 
struggled with it as if it were some quite new thing, 
and spent himself in trying to determine how he 
should present it to them. In his own mind he had 
very great doubt whether Northwick was in the acci- 
dent, and whether that dispatch was not a trick, a ruse 
to cover up the real course of his flight. But then 
there was no sense in his trying to hide his track, for 
he must have known that as yet there was no pursuit. 
If the telegram was a ruse, it was a ruse to conceal 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


143 


the fact that Northwick was still in the country, and 
had not gone to Canada at all. But Matt could not 
imagine any reason for such a ruse ; the motive must 
be one of those illogical impulses which ' sometimes 
govern criminals. In any case, Matt could not impart 
his conjectures to the poor women who must be await- 
ing his return with such cruel anxiety. If the man 
were really dead, it would simplify the matter beyond 
the power of any other fact ; Matt perceived how it 
would mitigate the situation for his family ; he could 
understand how people should hold that suicide was 
the only thing left for a man in Northwick’s strait. 
He blamed himself for coming a moment to that 
ground, and owned the shame of his interested motive ; 
but it was, nevertheless, a relief which he did not 
know how to refuse when Suzette Northwick took 
what he had to tell as final proof that her father was 
dead. 

She said that she had been talking it all over with 
her sister, and they were sure of it ; they were pre- 
pared for it ; they expected him to tell them so. 

Matt tried to have her realize that he had not told 
her so ; and he urged, as far as he could, the grounds 
for hoping that her father was not in the accident. 

She put them all aside. The difference in the ini- 
tials was really no difference ; and besides, and above 
all, there was the fact that if her father were anywhere 
alive, he must have seen the report of his death by 
this time, and sent some word, made some sign for 

their relief. She was douhly sure of this, because he 
10 G 


144 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


was SO anxiously thoughtful of them when they were 
separated. He expected them to notify him of every 
slight change in their plans when they were away, and 
always telegraphed as to his own. The only mystery 
was his going to Canada without letting them know 
his plans before or afterwards. It must have been 
upon some very suddenly urgent business that took 
his mind off everything else. 

Matt silently hung his head, dreading lest she should 
ask him what he thought, and wondering how he must 
answer if she did. He perceived that he had no choice 
but to lie, if she asked him ; but when he volunteered 
nothing, she did not ask him. 

It was the second morning after he had left her ; 
but he could see that she had lived long since their 
parting. He thought, ‘‘ That is the way she will look 
as she grows old.” The delicate outline of her cheeks 
showed a slight straightening of its curve ; her lips 
were pinched ; the aquiline jut of her nose was 
sharpened. There was no sign of tears in her eyes ; 
but Adeline wept, and constantly dried her tears 
with her handkerchief. She accepted her affliction 
meekly, as Suzette accepted it proudly, and she seemed 
to leave all the conjectures and conclusions to her 
sister. 

. Suzette was in the exaltation which death first brings 
to the bereaved, when people say that they do not real- 
ize it yet, and that they will feel it later. Then they 
go about, especially if they are women, in a sort of 
hysterical strength; they speak calmly of what has 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


145 


happened ; they help those beyond the immediate cir- 
cle of their loss to bear up against it ; these look to 
see them break suddenly under the stress of their 
bereavement, and wonder at their impassioned forti- 
tude. 

Matt knew neither how to stay nor to get away; it 
seemed intrusive to linger, and inhuman to go when he 
had told the little he had to tell. Suzette had been 
so still, so cold, in receiving him, that he was aston- 
ished at her intensity when he rose to leave her at 
last. 

I shall never forget what you have done for us, 
Mr. Hilary. Never ! Don’t belittle it, or try to make 
it seem nothing ! It was everything ! I wonder you 
could do it ! ” 

Yes ! ” Adeline put in, as if they had been talking 
his kindness over, as well as their loss, and were of 
one mind about it. 

“ Oh, indeed ! ” he began. Any one would have 
done it — ” 

Don’t say so ! ” cried Suzette. You think that 
because you would have done it for any one ! But you 
have done it for us ; and as long as I live I shall re- 
member that ! Oh ” — She broke off ; and dropped 
her face with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her 
lifted arm; and now he was less than ever able to 
leave her. They all sat down again, after they had 
risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of 
encouraging them ; of rescuing her from the conjec- 
ture which she had accepted as certainty. He was 


146 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


one of those men in whom passion can be born only of 
some form of unselfish kindness ; and who alone can 
make women happy. If it was love that was now 
stirring so strangely at his heart, he did not know it 
was love ; he thought it was still the pity that he had 
felt for the girl’s immense calamity. He knew that 
from every phase of it he could not save her, but he 
tried to save her from that which now confronted 
them, and from which he saw her suffering. He went 
over all the facts again with the hapless creatures, and 
reasoned from them the probability that their father 
was still alive. It was respite from sorrow which 
misery must follow ; it was insane, it was foolish, it 
Was even guilty, but he could not help trying to win 
it for them ; and when he left them at last, they were 
bright with the hope he had given them, and which 
the event, whether it was death or whether it was 
disgrace, must quench in a blacker despair. 

The truth of this rushed upon him when he found 
himself staggering away from the doomed house which 
cast its light gayly out upon the snow, and followed 
him with a perverse sense of its warmth and luxury 
into the night. But a strange joy mixed with the trouble 
in his soul ; and for all that sleepless night, the con- 
flict of these emotions seemed to toss him to and 
fro as if he were something alien and exterior to 
them. Northwick was now dead, and his death had 
averted the disgrace which overhung his name ; now 
he was still alive, and his escajie from death had 
righted all the wrong he had done. Then his escape 


THK QUALITY OF MERCY. 


147 


had only deepened the shame he had fled from ; his 
death had fixed a stain of a blood-guiltiness on his mis- 
deeds, and was no caprice of fate, but a judgment of 
the eternal justice. Against this savage conclusion 
Matt rebelled, and made his stand. 


XVIIL 


For forty-^ight hours longer the fact of the defalca- 
tion was kept back ; but then, in view of the legal 
action urged by those who did not accept the theory 
of Northwick’s death, it had to come out, and it broke 
all bounds in overwhelming floods of publicity. 

Day after day the papers were full of the facts, and 
it was weeks before the editorial homilies ceased. 
From time to time, fresh details and unexpected reve- 
lations, wise guesses and shameless fakes, renewed the 
interest of the original fact. There were days when 
there was nothing about it in the papers, and then 
days when it broke out in vivid paragraphs and whole 
lurid columns again. It was not that the fraud was 
singular in its features ; these were common to most 
of the defalcations, great and small, which were of 
daily fame in the newspapers. But the doubt as to 
the man’s fate, and the enduring mystery of his 
whereabouts, if he were still alive, were qualities that 
gave peculiar poignancy to Northwick’s case. Its re- 
sults in the failure of people not directly involved, 
were greater than could have been expected ; and the 
sum of his peculations mounted under investigation. 
It was all much worse than had been imagined, and 
in most of the editorial sermons upon it the moral 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


149 


gravity of the offence was measured by the amounts 
stolen and indirectly lost by it. There was a great 
deal of mere astonishment, as usual, that the crime 
should have been that of a man whom no one would 
have dreamed of suspecting, and there was some suf- 
ficiently ridiculous consternation at the presence of 
such moral decay in the very heart of the commercial 
life of Boston. 

In the Events, Pinney made his report of the affair 
the work of art which he boasted should come from 
his hand. It was really a space-man’s masterpiece ; 
and it appealed to every nerve in the reader’s body, 
with its sensations repeated through many columns, 
and continued from page to page with a recurrent 
efflorescence of scare-heads and catch-lines. In the 
ardor of production, all scruples and reluctances be- 
came fused in a devotion to the interests of the Events 
and its readers. With every hour the painful impres- 
sions of his interview with Miss North wick grew 
fainter, and the desire to use it stronger, and he ended 
by sparing no color of it. But he compromised with 
his sympathy for her, by deepening the shadows in the 
behavior of the man who could bring all this sorrow 
upon those dearest to him. He dwelt upon the uncon- 
sciousness of the family, the ignorance of the whole 
household, in which life ran smoothly on, while the 
head of both was a fugitive from justice, if not the 
victim of a swift retribution. He worked in all the 
pathos which the facts were capable of holding, and 
at certain points he enlarged the capacity of the facts. 


150 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


He described with a good deal of graphic force the 
Northwick interior. Under his touch the hall ex- 
panded, the staircase widened and curved, the carpets 
thickened, the servants multiplied, the library into 
which the Events^ representative was politely 
ushered,** was furnished with all the appliances of a 
cultured taste.’* The works of the standard authors 
in costly bindings graced its shelves ; magnificent 
paintings and groups of statuary adorned its walls and 
alcoves. The dress of the lady who courteously re- 
ceived the Events^ reporter, was suitably enriched ; her 
years were discounted, and her beauty approached to 
the patrician cast. There was nothing mean about 
Finney, and while he was at it he lavished a manorial 
grandeur upon the Northwick place, outside as well as 
inside. He imparted a romantic consequence to Hat- 
boro* itself : “ A thriving New England town, proud 
of its historic past, and rejoicing in its modern pros- 
perity, with a population of some five or six thousand 
souls, among whose working men and women modern 
ideas of the most advanced character had been realized 
in the well-known Peck Social Union, with its co-op- 
erative kitchen and its clientele of intelligent members 
and patrons.” 

People of all occupations became leading residents 
in virtue of taking Pinney into their confidence, and 
‘‘ A Prominent Proletarian *’ achieved the distinction 
of a catch-line by freely imparting the impressions of 
J. M. Northwick’s character among the working- 
classes. ‘‘The Consensus of Public Feeling,” in por- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


151 


traying which Pinney did not fail to exploit the pro- 
prietary word he had seized, formed the subject of 
some dramatic paragraphs ; and the whole formed a 
rich and fit setting for the main facts of North wick's 
undoubted fraud and flight, and for the conjectures 
which Pinney indulged in concerning his fate. 

Pinney’s masterpiece was, in fine, such as he could 
write only at that moment of his evolution as a man, 
and such as the Events could publish only at that 
period of its development as a newspaper. The report 
was flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not 
brutal, except by accident, and not unkind except 
through the necessities of the case. But it was help- 
lessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more 
philosophized than a monkish chronicle of the Middle 
Ages. 

The Abstract addressed a different class of readers, 
and aimed at a different effect in its treatment of pub- 
lic affairs. We look upon newspapers as having a 
sort of composite temperament, formed from the tem- 
peraments of all the different men employed on them ; 
but, as a matter of fact, they each express the disposi- 
tion and reflect the temperament of one controlling 
spirit, which all the other dispositions and tempera- 
ments yield to. This is so much the case that it is 
hard to efface the influence of a strong mind from the 
journal it has shaped, even when it is no longer ac- 
tively present in it. A good many years before the 
time of the Northwick defalcation, the Events had 
been in the management of a journalist, once well- 


152 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


known in Boston, a certain Bartley Hubbard, who 
had risen from the ranks of the reporters, and who had 
thoroughly reporterized it in the worst sense. After 
he left it, the owner tried several devices for elevating 
and reforming it, but failed, partly because he was 
himself a man of no ideals but those of the counting- 
room, and largely because the paper could not recover 
from the strong slant given it without self-destruction. 
So the Events continued what Bartley Hubbard had 
made it, and what the readers he had called about it 
liked it to be : a journal without principles and with- 
out convictions, but with interests only ; a map of busy 
life, indeed, but glaringly colored, with crude endeavors 
at picturesqueness, and with no more truth to life than 
those railroad maps where the important centres con- 
verge upon the broad black level of the line advertised, 
and leave rival roads wriggling faintly about in unin- 
habited solitudes. In Hubbard’s time the Abstract^ 
then the Chronicle-Abstract, was in charge of the 
editor who had been his first friend on the Boston 
press, and whom he finally quarreled with on a point 
which this friend considered dishonorable to Hubbard. 
Ricker had not since left the paper, and though he 
was called a crank Iiy some of the more progressive 
and reckless of the young men, he clung to his ideal 
of a conscience in journalism ; he gave the Abstract 
a fixed character and it could no more have changed 
than the Events, without self-destruction. The men 
under him were not so many as CaBsar’s soldiers, 
and that, perhaps, was the reason why he knew 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


153 


not only their names but their qualities. When 
Maxwell came with the fact of the defalcation which 
the detectives had entrusted to him for provisional use, 
and asked to be assigned to the business of working it 
up, Ricker consented, but he consented reluctantly. 
He thought Maxwell was better for better things ; he 
knew he was a ravenous reader of philosophy and 
sociology, and he had been early in the secret of his 
being a poet ; it had since become an open secret 
among his fellow-reporters, for which he suffered both 
honor and dishonor. 

“ I shouldn’t think you’d like to do it. Maxwell,” 
said Ricker, kindly. “ It isn’t in your line, is it ? Bet* 
ter give it to some of the other fellows.” 

“It’s more in my line than you suppose, Mr. 
Ricker,” said the young fellow. “ It’s a subject I’ve 
looked up a great deal lately. I once thought ” — he 
looked down bashfully — “ of trying to write a play 
about a defaulter, and I got together a good many 
facts about defalcation. You’ve no idea how common 
it is ; it’s about the commonest fact of our civiliza- 
tion.” 

“ Ah ! Is that so ? ” asked Ricker with ironical de- 
ference to the bold generalizer. “ Who else is ‘ onto ’ 
this thing?” 

“ Pinney, of the Events.^’* 

“Well, he’s a dangerous rival, in some ways,” said 
Ricker. “ When it comes to slush and a whitewash 
brush, I don’t think you’re a match for him. But per- 
haps you don’t intend to choose the same weapons.” 


154 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Ricker pulled down the green-lined pasteboard peak 
that he wore over his forehead by gaslight, and hitched 
his chair round to his desk again, and Maxwell knew 
that he was authorized to do the work. 

He got no word from the detective, who had given 
him a hint of the affair, to go ahead the night after his 
return from Hatboro', as he had expected, but he knew 
that the fact could not be kept back, and he worked 
as hard at his report as Pinney and Pinney’s wife had 
worked at theirs. He waited till the next morning to 
begin, however, for he was too fagged after he came 
home from the Hilarys’ ; he rose early and got himself 
a cup of tea over the gas-burner ; before the house 
was awake he was well on in his report. By nightfall 
he had finished it, and then he carried it to Ricker. 
The editor had not gone to dinner yet, and he gave 
Maxwell’s work the critical censure of a hungry man. 
It was in two separate parts : one, a careful and lucid 
statement of all the facts which had come to Maxwell’s 
knowledge, in his quality of reporter, set down without 
sensation, and in that self-respectful decency of tone 
which the Abstract affected; the other, an editorial 
comment upon the facts. Ricker read the first through 
without saying anything ; when he saw what the second 
was, he pushed up his green-lined peak, and said, 
‘‘ Hello, young man ! Who invited you to take the 
floor ? ” 

Nobody. I found I couldn’t embody my general 
knowledge of defalcation in the report without imperti- 
nence, and as I had to get my wisdom off my mind 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


155 


somehow, I put it in editorial shape. I don’t expect 
you to take it. Perhaps I can sell it somewhere.” 

Ricker seemed to pay no attention to his explana- 
tion. He went on reading the manuscript, and when 
he ended, he took up the report again, and compared 
it with the editorial in length. If we printed these 
things as they stand it would look like a case of the 
tail wagging the dog.” 

Maxwell began again, ‘‘Oh, I didn’t expect — ” 

“ Oh, yes, you did,” said Ricker. “ Of course, you 
felt that the report was at least physically inade- 
quate.” 

“ I made as much as I honestly could of it. I 
knew you didn’t like padding or faking, and I don’t 
myself.” ** 

Ricker was still holding the two manuscripts up 
before him. He now handed them over his shoulder 
to Maxwell, where he stood beside him. “ Do you 
think you could weld these two things together ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ Suppose you try.” 

“ As editorial, or — ” 

“ Either. I’ll decide after you’re done. Do it 
here.” 

He pushed some papers off the long table beside 
him, and Maxwell sat down to his task. It was not 
difficult. The material was really of kindred character 
throughout. He had merely to write a few prefatory 
sentences, in the editorial attitude, to his report, and 
then append the editorial, with certain changes, 


156 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


again. It did not take him long ; in half an hour he 
handed the result to Ricker. 

Yes/’ said Ricker, and he began to read it anew, 
with his blue pencil in his hand. 

Maxwell had come with nerves steeled to bear the 
rejection of his article entire, but he was not pre- 
pared to suffer the erasure of all his pet phrases and 
favorite sentences, sometimes running to entire para- 
graphs. 

When Ricker handed it back to him at last with 
What do you think of it now ? ” Maxwell had the 
boldness to answer, “ Well, Mr. Ricker, if I mu&t say, 
I think you’ve taken all the bones and blood out 
of it.” 

Ricker laughed. “ Oh, no ! Merely the fangs and 
poison-sacks. Look here, young man ! Did you be- 
lieve all those cynical things when you were saying 
them?” 

‘‘ I don’t know — ” 

I know. I know you didrCi, Every one of them 
rang false. They were there for literary effect, and 
for the pleasure of the groundlings. But by and by, 
if you keep on saying those things, you’ll get to think- 
ing them, and what a man thinks a man is. There 
are things there that you ought to be ashamed of, if 
you really thought them, but I know you didn’t, so I 
made free to strike them all out.” Maxwell looked 
foolish ; he wished to assert himself, but he did not 
know how. Ricker went on : “ Those charming little 
sarcasms and innuendoes of yours would have killed 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


157 


your article for really intelligent readers. They 
would have suspected a young fellow having his fling, 
or an old fool speaking out of the emptiness of his 
heart. As it is, we have got something unique, and I 
don’t mind telling you I’m very glad to have it. I’ve 
never made any secret of my belief that you have 
talent.” 

^‘You’ve been very good,” said Maxwell, a little 
rueful still. The surgeon’s knife hurts though it cures. 

When Maxwell went home, he met his mother. 
‘‘ Why, mother,” said the young fellow, “ old Ricker 
is going to print my report as editorial ; and we’re not 
going to have any report.” 

I told you it was good ! ” 

Maxwell felt it was due to himself to keep some 
grudge, and he said, “ Yes ; but he’s taken all the life 
out of it with his confounded blue pencil. It’s per- 
fectly dead.” 

It did not seem so when he saw it in proof at the 
office later, and it did not seem so when he got it in 
the paper. He had not slept well ; he was excited by 
several things ; by the use Ricker had made of his 
work, and by the hopes of advancement which this 
use quickened in him. He was not ashamed of it ; he 
was very proud of it ; and he wondered at its symmetry 
and force, as he read and read it again. 

He had taken very high philosophical ground in his 
view of the matter, and had accused the structure of 
society. There must be something rotten, he said, 
at the core of our civilization, when every morning 


158 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


brought the story of a defalcation, great or small, in 
some part of our country : not the peculations of such 
poor clerks and messengers as their employers could 
be insured against, but of officials, public and corpo- 
rate, for whom we had no* guaranty but the average 
morality of our commercial life. How low this was 
might be inferred from the fact that while such a 
defalcation as that of J. M. North wick created dis- 
may in business and social circles, it could not fairly 
be said to create surprise. It was, most unhappily, a 
thing to be expected, in proof of which no stronger 
evidence need be alleged than that patent to the 
Abstract reporter in the community where the de- 
faulter had his home, and where, in spite of his repu- 
tation for the strictest probity, it was universally 
believed that he had run away with other people’s 
money merely because he had been absent twenty- 
four hours without accounting for his wherabouts. 

At this point Maxwell wove in the material he had 
gathered on his visit to Hatboro’, and without using 
names or persons contrived to give a vivid impression 
of the situation and the local feeling. He aimed at 
the historical attitude, and with some imitation of 
Taine’s method and manner, he achieved it. His 
whole account of the defalcation had a closeness of 
texture which involved every significant detail, from 
the first chance suspicion of the defaulter’s honesty, to 
the final opinions and conjectures of his fate. At the 
same time the right relation and proportion of the 
main facts were kept, and the statement was through- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


159 


out so dignified and dispassionate that it had the 
grace of something remote in time and place. It was 
when the narrative ended and the critical comment 
began that the artistic values made themselves felt. 
Ricker had been free in his recognition of the excel- 
lence of Maxwell’s work, and quick to appreciate its 
importance to the paper. He made the young fellow 
disjointed compliments and recurrent predictions con- 
cerning it when they were together, but there were 
qualities in it that he felt afterwards he had not been 
just to. -Of course it owed much to the mere accident 
of Maxwell’s accumulation of material about defalca- 
tions for his play ; but he had known men break 
down under the mass of their material, and it 
surprised and delighted him to see how easily 
and strongly Maxwell handled his. That sick little 
youngster carried it all off with an air of robust 
maturity that amused as well as surprised Ricker. 
He saw where the fellow had helped himself out, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, with the style and method 
of his favorite authors; and he admired the philo- 
sophic poise he had studied from them ; but no one 
except Maxwell himself was in the secret of the for- 
bearance, the humane temperance with which North- 
wick was treated. This was a color from the play 
which had gone to pieces in his hands ; he simply 
adapted the conception of a typical defaulter, as he 
had evolved it from a hundred instances, to the case of 
the defaulter in hand, and it fitted perfectly. He 
had meant his imaginary defaulter to appeal rather to 


160 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


the compassion than the justice of the theatre, and he 
presented to the reader the almost fatal aspect of the 
offence. He dwelt upon the fact that the case, so far 
from being isolated or exceptional, was without peculi- 
arities, was quite normal. He drew upon his accumu- 
lated facts for the proof of this, and with a rapid array 
of defaulting treasurers, cashiers, superintendents, and 
presidents, he imparted a sense of the uniformity in 
their malfeasance which is so evident to the student. 
They were all comfortably placed and in the way to 
prosperity if not fortune; they were all tempted by 
the possession of means to immediate wealth ; they all 
yielded so far as to speculate with the money that did 
not belong to them ; they were all easily able to re- 
place the first loans they made themselves ; they all 
borrowed again and then could not replace the loans ; 
they were all found out, and all were given a certain 
time to make up their shortage. After tliat a certain 
diversity appeared : some shot themselves, and some 
hanged themselves, others decided to stand their trial ; 
the vastly greater number ran away to Canada. 

In this presentation of the subject. Maxwell had 
hardly to do more than to copy the words of a certain 
character in his play : one of those cynical personages, 
well-known to the drama, whose function is to observe 
the course of the action, and to make good-humored 
sarcasms upon the conduct and motives of the other 
characters. It was here that Ricker employed his 
blue pencil the most freely, and struck out passages 
of almost diabolical persiflage, and touched the colors 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


161 


of the black pessimism with a few rays of hope. The 
final summing up, again, was adapted from a drama 
that had been rejected by several purveyors of the 
leg-burlesque as immoral. In a soliloquy intended to 
draw tears from the listener, the hero of Maxwell’s 
play, when he parted from his young wife and children, 
before taking poison, made some apposite reflections 
on his case, in which he regarded himself as the victim 
of conditions, and in prophetic perspective beheld an 
interminable line of defaulters to come, who should 
encounter the same temptations and commit the same 
crimes under the same circumstances. Maxwell pim- 
ply recast this soliloquy in editorial terms ; and main- 
tained that not only was there nothing exceptional in 
Northwick’s case, but that it might be expected to 
repeat itself indefinitely. On one hand, you had 
men educated to business methods which permitted 
this form of dishonesty and condemned that ; their 
moral fibre was strained, if not weakened, by the 
struggle for money going on all around us ; on the 
other hand, you had opportunity, the fascination of 
chance, the uncertainty of punishment. The causes 
would continue the same, and the effects would con- 
tinue the same. He declared that no good citizen 
could wish a defaulter to escape the penalty of his 
offence against society ; but it behooved society to 
consider how far it was itself responsible, which it 
might well do without ignoring the responsibility of 
the criminal. He ended with a paragraph in which 
he forecast a future without such causes and without 


162 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


such effects ; but Ricker would not let this pass, even 
in the semi-ironical temper Maxwell had given it. He 
said it was rank socialism, and he cut it out in the 
proof, where he gave the closing sentences of the 
article an interrogative instead of an affirmative 


XIX. 


The Hilarys always straggled down to breakfast as 
they chose. When Matt was at home, his mother and 
he were usually first ; then his father came, and 
Louise last. They took the Events^ as many other 
people did, because with all its faults it was a thorough 
newspaper ; and they maintained their self-respect by 
taking the Abstract. The morning that the defalcation 
came out. Matt sent and got all the other papers, 
which he had glanced through and talked over with 
his mother before his father joined them at nine 
o’clock. 

Several of them had illustrations : likenesses of 
Northwick, and views of his house in Boston, and his 
house in Hatboro’ ; views of the company’s Mills at 
Ponkwasset; views of the railroad wreck at Well- 
water ; but it was Finney’s masterpiece which really 
made Hilary sick. All the papers were atrocious, but 
that was loathsome. Yet there was really nothing 
more to blame in the attitude of the papers than in 
that of the directors, who gave the case to the detec- 
tives, and set the machinery of publicity at work. 
Both were acting quite within their rights, both were 
fulfilling an official duty. Hilary, however, had been 
forced against his grain into the position, almost, of 


164 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Northwick’s protector ; he had suffered keenly from 
the falsity of this position, for no one despised the sort 
of man Northwick was more than he ; but when you 
have suffered, even for a rogue, you begin to feel 
some kindness for him. All these blows fell upon his 
growing sympathy for the poor devil, as he called him. 
He got through the various accounts in the various 
papers, by broken efforts, taking them as if in succes- 
sive shocks from these terrible particulars, which 
seemed to shower themselves upon him when he came 
in range of them, till he felt bruised and beaten all 
over. 

Well, at least, it’s out, my dear,” said his wife, who 
noted the final effect of his sufferings across the table, 
and saw him pause bewildered from the last paper he 
had dropped. There’s that comfort.” 

Is that a comfort ? ” he asked, huskily. 

“ Why, yes, I think it is. The suspense is over, 
and now you can begin to pick yourself up.” 

‘‘ I suppose there’s something in that.” He kept 
looking at Matt, or rather, at the copy of the Abstract 
which Matt was hiding behind, and he said, “ What 
have you got there. Matt ? ” 

Perhaps I’d better read it out,” said Matt. “ It 
seems to me most uncommonly good. I wonder who 
could have done it ! ” 

“ Suppose you do your wondering afterwards,” said 
his father impatiently ; and Matt began to read. The 
positions of the article were not such as Hilary could 
have taken, probably, if be had been in a different 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


165 


mood; its implications were, some of them, such as he 
must have decidedly refused ; but the temper of the 
whole was so humane, so forbearing, so enlightened, 
that Hilary was in a glow of personal gratitude to the 
writer, for what he called his common decency, by the 
time, the reading was over. That is a very extra- 
ordinary article,” he said, and he joined Matt in won- 
dering who could have done it, with the usual effect 
in such cases. 

I wish,” said Mrs. Hilary, ‘‘ that every other 
newspaper could be kept from those poor things.” 
She meant Northwick’s daughters, and she added, ‘‘ If 
they must know the facts, they couldn’t be more 
mercifully told them.” 

“ Wliy, that was what I was thinking, mother,” said 
Matt. ‘‘ But they can’t be kept to this version, un- 
happily. The misery will have to come on them 
shapelessly, as all our miseries do. I don’t know that 
the other papers are so bad — ” 

Not bad ! ” cried his father. 

No. They’re not unkind to them, except as they 
are just to him. They probably represent fairly 
enough the average thinking and feeling about the 
matter ; the thing they’ll have to meet all their lives 
and get used to. But I wish I knew who did this 
Abstract article ; I should like to thank him.” 

“ The question is, now,” said Mrs. Hilary, What 
can we do for them there ? Are you sure you made it 
clear to them. Matt, that we were willing to have 
them come to us, no matter what happened ? ” 


166 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Louise and I both tried to do that,” said her son, 

when we were there together ; and when I reported 
to them after Well water, I told them again and again 
what our wish was.” 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Hilary, “ I am glad we have done 
everything we could. At first I doubted the wisdom 
of your taking Louise to see them ; but now I’m satis- 
fied that it was right. And I’m satisfied that your 
father did right in getting that wretched creature the 
chance he abused.” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Matt. ‘‘ That was right. And I’m 
thoroughly glad he’s out of it. If he’s still alive, 
I’m glad he’s out of it.” 

Hilary had kept silent, miserably involved in his 
various remorses and misgivings, but now he broke 
out. ‘^And I think you’re talking abominable non- 
sense, Matt. I didn’t get Northwick given that chance 
to enable him to escape the consequences of his ras- 
cality. Why shouldn’t he be punished for it ? ” 

Because it wouldn’t do the least good, to him or 
to any one else. It wouldn’t reform him, it wouldn’t 
reform anything. Northwick isn’t the disease ; he’s 
merely the symptom. You can suppress him ; but 
that won’t cure the disease. It’s the whole social body 
that’s sick, as this article in the Abstract implies.” 

“ I don’t see any such implication in it,” his father 
angrily retorted. “ Your theory would form an ex- 
cuse for the scoundrelism of every scoundrel unhung. 
Where is the cure of the social body to begin if it 
doesn’t begin at home, with every man in it ? I tell 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


167 


you, it would be a very good thing for North wick, and 
every rogue like him, if lie could be made serve his 
term in State’s prison.” 

The controversy raged a long time without depart- 
ing from these lines of argument on either side. Mrs. 
Hilary listened with the impatience women feel at 
every absence from the personal ground, the only 
ground of reality. When Matt had got so far from it 
as to be saying to his father, “ Then I understand you 
to maintain that if A is properly punished for his sins, 
B will practice virtue in the same circumstances and 
under the same temptations that were too much for 
A,” his mother tried to break in upon them. She did 
not know much about the metaphysical rights and 
wrongs of the question ; she only felt that Matt was 
getting his father, who loved him so proudly and in- 
dulgently, into a corner, and she saw that this was 
unseemly. Besides, when anything wrong happens, 
a woman always wants some one punished; some 
woman, first, or then some other woman’s men kin- 
dred. Every woman is a conservative in this, and 
Mrs. Hilary made up her mind to stop the talk be- 
tween her son and husband, because she felt Matt to 
be doubly wrong. 

But when she spoke, her husband roared at her. 
Don’t interrupt, Sarah ! ” and then he roared at 
Matt, “ I tell you that the individual is not concerned 
in the matter ! I tell you that it is the interest, the 
necessity of the community to punish A for his sins 
without regard to B, and for my part, I shall leave 


168 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


no stone unturned till we have found Northwick, dead 
or alive ; and if he is alive, I shall spare no effort to 
have him brought to trial, conviction and punishment.” 
He shouted these words out, and thumped the break- 
fast table so that the spoons clattered in the cups, and 
Mrs. Hilary could hardly hear what Patrick was say- 
ing just inside the door. 

To see Mr. Hilary ? A lady ? Did she send her 
card ? ” 

She wouldn’t give her name, ma’am ; she said she 
didn’t wish to, ma’am. She wished to see Mr. Hilary 
just a moment in the reception-room.” 

Hilary was leaning forward to give the table another 
bang with his fist, but his wife succeeded in stopping 
him, with a repetition of Patrick’s message. 

I won’t see her,” he answered. It’s probably a 
woman reporter. They’re in our very bread trough. 
I tell you,” he went on to Matt, there are claims 
upon you as a citizen, as a social factor, which annul 
all your sentimental obligations to B as a brother. 
God bless my soul ! Isn’t C a brother, too, and all 
the rest of the alphabet ? If A robs the other letters, 
then let B take a lesson from the wholesome fact that 
A’s little game has landed him in jail.” 

Oh, I admit that the A’s had better suffer for their 
sins ; but I doubt if the punishment which a man gets 
against his will is the right kind of suffering. If this 
man had come forward voluntarily, and offered to bear 
the penalty he had risked by his misdeed, it would 
have been a good thing for himself and for everybody 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


169 


else ; it would have been a real warning. But he ran 
away.” 

‘‘And so he ought to be allowed to stay away! 
You are a pretty Dogberry come to judgment 1 You 
would convict a thief by letting him steal out of your 
company.” 

“ It seems to me that’s what you did, father. And 
I think you did right, as I’ve told you.” 

“ What I did ? ” shouted Hilary. “ No, sir, I did 
nothing of the kind I I gave him a chance to make 
himself an honest man — ” 

“ My dear,” said Mrs. Hilary, “ you must go and 
get rid of that woman, at least ; or let me.” 

Hilary flung down his napkin, and red from argu- 
ment cast a dazed look about him, and without really 
quite knowing what he was about rushed out of the 
room. 

His wife hardly had time to say, “ You oughtn’t to 
have got into a dispute with your father. Matt, when 
you know he’s been so perplexed,” before they heard 
his voice call out, “Good heavens, my poor child!” 
For the present they could not know that this was a 
cry of dismay at the apparition of Suzette Northwick, 
who met him in the reception-room with the demand : 

“ AYhat is this about my father, Mr. Hilary ? ” 

“ About your father, my dear ? ” He took the hands 
she put out to him with her words, and tried to think 
what pitying and helpful thing he could say. She 
got them away from him, and held one fast with the 
other. 


170 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Is it true ? ” she asked. 

He permitted himself the pretence of not under- 
standing her; he had to do it. “Why, we hope — 
we hope it isn’t true. Nothing more is known about 
his being in the accident than we knew at first. 
Didn’t Matt — ” 

“ It isn’t that It’s worse than that. It’s that other 
thing — that the papers say — that he was a defaulter 

— dishonest. Is that true ” 

“ Oh, no, no ! Nothing of the kind, my dear ! ” 
, Hilary had to say this ; he felt that it would be in- 
human to say anything else ; nothing else would have 
been possible. “ Those newspapers — confound them ! 

— you know how they get things all — You needn’t 
mind what the papers say.” 

“But why should they say anything about my 
father, at such a time, when he’s — What does it all 
mean, Mr. Hilary ? I don’t believe the papers, and 
so I came to you — as soon as I could, this morning. 
I knew you would tell me the truth. You have 
known my father so long ; and you know how good 
he is ! I — You know that he never wronged any 
one — that he couldn't ! ” 

“ Of course, of course ! ” said Hilary. “ It was quite 
right to come to me — quite right. How — how is 
your sister ? You must stay, now — Louise isn’t 
down, yet — and have breakfast with her. I’ve just 
left Mrs. Hilary at the table. You must join us. She 
can assure you — Matt is quite confident that there’s 
nothing to be distressed about in regard to the — 
He — ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


171 


Hilary kept bustling aimlessly about as he spoke 
these vague phrases, and he now tried to have her 
go out of the room before him ; but she dropped into 
a chair, and he had to stay. 

I want you to tell me, Mr. Hilary, whether there 
is the slightest foundation for what the papers say this 
morning ? ’’ 

How, foundation ? My dear child — ’’ 

‘^Has there been any trouble between my father 
and the company ? ” 

“ W ell — well, there are always questions arising.’’ 

Is there any question of my father’s accounts — 
his honesty ? ” 

“ People question everything nowadays, when there 
is so much — want of confidence in business. There 
have to be investigations, from time to time.” 

And has there been any reason to suspect my 
father ? Does any one suspect him ? ” 

Hilary looked round the room with a roving eye, 
that he could not bring to bear upon the girl’s face. 

Why, I suppose that some of us — some of the di- 
rectors — have had doubts — ” 

“ Have you f ” 

‘‘My dear girl — my poor child! You couldn’t 
understand. But I can truly say, that when this 
examination — when the subject came up for discus- 
tion at the board-meeting, I felt warranted in insisting 
that your father should have time to make it all right. 
He said he could ; and we agreed that he should have 
the chance.” Hilary said this for the sake of the 


172 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


girl ; and he was truly ashamed of the magnanimous 
face it put upon his part in the affair. He went on : 
“ It is such a very, very common thing for people in 
positions of trust to use the resources in their charge, 
and then replace them, that these things happen every 
day, and no harm is meant, and none is done — unless 
— unless the venture turns out unfortunately. It’s 
not an isolated case ! ” Hilary felt that he was get- 
ting on now, though he was aware that he was talk- 
ing very immorally ; but he knew that he was not 
corrupting the poor child before him, and that he was 
doing his best to console her, to comfort her. The 
whole affair was very well put in the Abstract Have 
you seen it ? You must see that, and not mind what 
the other papers say. Come in to Mrs. Hilary — we 
have the paper — ” 

Suzette rose. “ Then some of the directors believe 
that my father has been taking the money of the com- 
pany, as the papers say ? ” 

‘‘Their believing this or that, is nothing to the 
point — ” 

“ Do you f ’’ 

“ I can’t say — I don’t think he meant — He ex- 
pected to restore it, of course. He was given time for 
that.^’ Hilary hesitated, and then he thought he had 
better say : “ But he had certainly been employing 
the company’s funds in his private enterprises,” 

“ That is all,” said the girl, and she now preceded 
Hilary out of the room. It was with inexpressible 
relief .that he looked up and saw Louise coming down 
the stairs. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


173 


“ Why, Sue ! she cried ; and she flew down the 
steps, and threw her arms around her friend's neck. 
“ Oh, Sue, Sue ! ’’ she said, in that voice a woman 
uses to let another woman know that she understands 
and sympathizes utterly with her. 

Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. Let me 
go, Louise.” 

‘‘No, no! You shan’t go. I want you — you 
must stay with us, now. I know Matt doesn’t believe 
at all in that dreadful report.” 

“ That wouldn’t be anything now, even if it were 
true. There’s another report — don’t you know it ? — 
in the paper this morning.” Louise tried to look 
unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before 
she said : “ And your father has been saying my father 
is a thief.” 

“ Oh, papa I ” Louise wailed out. 

It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them 
both; and Hilary gave a roar of grief and protest. 
Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he could 
hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and 
.was gone. 


XX. 


The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes 
remained sorrow to Northwick’s daughters. When 
their father did not come back, or make any sign of 
being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first 
belief, and accepted the fact of his death. But it was 
a condition of their grief, that they must refuse any 
thought of guilt in him. Their love began to work 
that touching miracle which is possible in women’s 
hearts, and to establish a faith in his honor which 
no proof of his dishonesty could shake. 

Even if they could have believed all the things those 
newspapers accused him of, they might not have seen 
the blame that others did in his acts. But as women, 
they could not make the fine distinctions that men 
make in business morality, and as North wick’s 
daughters, they knew that he would not have done 
what he did if it was wrong. Their father had bor- 
rowed other people’s money, intending to pay it back, 
and then had lost his own, and could not ; that was 
all. 

With every difference of temperament they agreed 
upon this, and they were agreed that it would be a 
sort of treason to his memory if they encouraged the 
charges against him by making any change in theij 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


175 


life. But it was a relief to them, especially to Su- 
zette, who held the purse, wheu the changes began to 
make themselves, and their costly establishment fell 
away, through the discontent and anxiety of this ser- 
vant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton 
and his wife. She had nothing to do now but grieve 
for the child she had lost, and she willingly came in 
to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her 
husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as 
he could, and tended the furnaces, and saw that the 
plants in the greenhouses did not freeze. He was up 
early and late ; he had no poetic loyalty to the North- 
wicks ; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, 
they had always treated him well, and he could not 
bear to see things run behind. 

Day after day went by, and week after week, and 
the sisters lived on in the solitude to which the com- 
passion, the diffidence, or the contempt of their neigh- 
bors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came 
to the house, where he felt it his duty and his privi- 
lege to bring the consolation that his office empowered 
him to offer in any house of mourning ; but Suzette 
would not see him ; she sent him grateful messages 
and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell 
him each time that the next time she hoped to see him. 

One of the ladies of South Hatboro’, a Mrs. 
Hunger, who spent her winters as well as her sum- 
mers there, penetrated as far as the library, upon her 
own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; 

but she failed to find either of the sisters. She had to 
12 H* 


176 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


content herself with urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of 
the doctor, to join her in a second attempt upon their 
privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of 
Suzette’s character and temper adverse to the 
motherly impulse of pity which she would have felt 
for any one else in the girhs position. Mrs. Gerrish, 
the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro’, who 
distinguished himself by coming up from Boston with 
Northwick, on the very day of the directors’ meeting, 
would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband for- 
bade her. He had stood out against the whole com- 
munity in his belief in North wick’s integrity and 
solvency; and while every one else accused him of 
running away as soon as he was reported among the 
missing in the railroad accident, Gerrish had refused 
to admit it. The defalcation came upon him like 
thunder out of a clear sky ; he felt himself disgraced 
before his fellow-citizens ; and he resented the deceit 
which Northwick had tacitly practised upon him. He 
was impatient of the law’s delays in seizing the prop- 
erty the defaulter had left behind him, and which was 
now clearly the property of his creditors. Other 
people in Hatboro’, those who had been the readiest 
to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty leniency 
toward him in their thoughts. Some believed that he 
had gone to his account in other courts ; some that 
he was still alive in poverty and exile, which were 
punishment enough, as far as he was concerned. But 
Gerrish demanded something exemplary, something 
dramatic from the law. He blamed the Ponkwasset 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


177 


directors for a species of incivism, in failing to have 
North wick indicted at once, dead or alive. 

Why don’t they turn his family out of that house, 
and hand it over to the stockholders he has robbed ? ” 
he asked one morning in the chance conclave of 
louno^ers in his store. I understand it is this man 

o 

Hilary, in Boston, who has shielded and — and pro- 
tected him from the start, and — and right along. I 
don’t know why ; but if I was one of the Ponkwasset 
stockholders, I think I should. I should make a point 
of inquiring why North wick’s family went on living in 
my house after he had plundered me of everything he 
could lay his hands on.” 

The lawyer Putney was present, and he shifted the 
tobacco he had in one cheek to the other cheek, and 
set his little, firm jaw. ‘‘Well, Billy, I’ll tell you 
why. Because the house, and farm, and all the real 
estate belong to Northwick’s family and not to North- 
wick’s creditors.” The listeners laughed, and Putney 
went on, “ That was a point that brother Northwick 
looked after a good while ago, I guess. I guess he 
must have done it as long ago as when you first wanted 
his statue put on top of the soldier’s monument.” 

“ I never wanted his statue put on top of the sol- 
dier’s monument ! ” Mr. Gerrish retorted angrily. 

Putney’s spree was past, and he was in the full 
enjoyment of the contempt for Gerrish, which was 
apt to turn to profound respect when he was in his 
cups. He was himself aware of the anomalous transi- 
tion by which he then became a leader of conserva- 


178 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


tive feeling on all subjects and one of the staunchest 
friends of the status ; he said it was the worst thing 
he knew against the existing condition of things. He 
went on, now: ^‘Didn’t you? Well, I think it would 
look better than that girl they’ve got there in cir- 
cus-clothes.” They all laughed; Putney had a dif- 
ferent form of derision for the Victory of the soldier’s 
monument every time he spoke of it. ‘‘ And it would 
suggest what those poor fellows really died for : that 
we could have more and more North wicks, and a whole 
Northwick system of things. Heigh ? You see, Billy, I 
don’t have to be so hard on the North wicks, personally, 
because I regard them as a necessary part of the sys- 
tem. What would become of the laws and the courts 
if there were no rogues ? We must have Northwicks. 
It’s a pity that the Northwicks should have families ; 
but I don’t blame the Northwicks for providing against 
the evil day that Northwickism is sure to end in. I’m 
glad the roof can’t be taken from over those women’s 
heads ; I respect the paternal love and foresight of J. 
Milton in deeding the property to them.” 

“It’s downright robbery of his creditors for them to 
keep it ! ” Gerrish shouted. 

“ Oh, no, it i§n’t, Billy. It’s law. You must re- 
spect the law and the rights of property. You’ll be 
wanting the strikers to burn down the shoe-shops the 
next time we have trouble here. You’re getting 
awfully incendiary, Billy.” 

Putney carried the laugh against Gerrish, but there 
were some of the group, and there were many people 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


179 


in Hatboro’, including most of the women, who felt 
the want of exemplary measures in dealing with North- 
wick’s case. These ladies did not see the sense of let- 
ting those girls live on just as if nothing had happened, 
in a house that their father’s crimes had forfeited to 
his victims, while plenty of honest people did not know 
where they were going to sleep that night, or where 
the next mouthful of victuals was to come from. It 
was not really the houseless and the hungry who com- 
plained of this injustice ; it was not even those who 
toiled for their daily bread in the Hatboro’ shops 
who said such things. They were too busy, and then 
too tired, to think much about them, and the noise 
of Northwick’s misdeeds died first amid the din of 
machinery. It was in the close, stove-heated parlors 
of the respectable citizens, behind the windows that 
had so long commanded envious views of the North- 
wicks going by in their carriages and sledges, and 
among women of leisure and conscience, that his in- 
famy endured, and that the injuries of his creditors 
cried out for vengeance on those daughters of his; 
they had always thought themselves too good to speak 
to other folks. Such women could not understand 
what the Ponkwasset Mills Company meant by not 
turning those girls right out of doors, and perhaps they 
could not have been taught why the company had no 
power to do this, or why the president, at least, had 
no wish to do it. When they learned that his family 
still kept up friendly relations with the Northwick 
girls, they were not without their suspicions, which 


180 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


were not long in becoming their express belief, that 
the Hilarys were sharing in the booty. They were 
not cruel, and would not really have liked to see the 
Northwick girls suffer, if it had come to that ; but 
they were greedy of the vengeance promised upon the 
wicked, and they had no fear of judging or of meting 
with the fullest measure. 

In the freer air of the streets and stores and offices, 
their husbands were not so eager. In fact, it might 
be said that no man was eager but Gerrish. After the 
first excitement, and the successive shocks of sensation 
imparted by the newspapers had passed, there came 
over the men of Hatboro’ a sort of resignation which 
might or might not be regarded as proof of a general 
demoralization. The defalcation had startled them, 
but it could not be said to have surprised any one ; it 
was to be expected of a man in North wick’s position ; 
it happened every day somewhere, and the day had 
come when it should happen there. They did not say 
God was good and that Mahomet was His prophet, 
but they were fatalists all the same. They accepted 
the accomplished fact, and, reflecting that the disaster 
did not really concern them, many of them regarded 
it dispassionately, even jocosely. They did not care 
for a lot of rich people in Boston who had been sup- 
plying Northwick with funds to gamble in stocks ; it 
was not as if the Hatboro’ bank had been wrecked, 
and hard-working folks had lost their deposits. They 
could look at the matter with an impartial eye, and in 
their hearts they obscurely believed that any member 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


181 


of the Ponkwasset Company would have done the 
same thing as Northwick if he had _got the chance. 
Beyond that they were mostly interested in the ques- 
tion whether Northwick had perished in the railroad 
accident, or had put up a job on the public, and was 
possessing his soul in peace somewhere in Rogue’s 
Rest, as Putney called the Dominion of Canada. 
Putney represented the party in favor of Northwick’s 
survival ; and Gates, the provision man, led the oppo- 
site faction. When Putney dropped in to order his 
marketing, he usually said something like, Well, 
Joel, how’s cremation, this morning ? ” 

‘‘Just booming, Squire. That stock’s coming up, 
right along. Bound to be worth a hundred cents on 
the dollar before hayin’, yet.” This, or something like 
it, was what Gates usually answered, but one morning 
he asked, “ Heard how it stands with the Ponkwasset 
folks, I suppose ? They say — paper does — that the 
reason the president hung off from making a complaint 
was that he didn’t rightly see how he could have the 
ashes indicted. He believes in it, any way.” 

“ Well,” said Putney, “ the fathers of New England 
all died in the blessed hope of infant damnation. But 
that didn’t prove it.” 

“That’s something so. Squire. Guess you got me 
there,” said Gates. 

“ I can understand old Hilary’s not wanting to push 
the thing, under the circumstances, and I don’t blame 
him. B,ut the law must have its course. Hilary’s 
got his duty to do. I don’t want to do it for him.” 


XXT. 


Hilary could not help himself, though when he 
took the legal steps he was obliged to, it seemed to 
him that he was wilfully urging on the persecution of 
that poor young girl and that poor old maid. It was 
really ghastly to go through the form of indicting a 
man who, so far as any one could prove to the con- 
trary, had passed with his sins before the tribunal that 
searches hearts and judges motives rather than acts. 
But still the processes had to go on, and Hilary had 
to prompt them. It was all talked over in Hilary’s 
family, where he was pitied and forgiven in that affec- 
tion which keeps us simple and sincere in spite of 
the masks we wear to the world. His wife and his 
children knew how kind he was, and how much he 
suffered in this business which, from the first, he had 
tried to be so lenient in. When he wished to talk of 
it, they all agreed that Matt must not vex him with 
his theories and his opinions ; and when he did not 
talk of it, no one must mention it. 

Hilary felt the peculiar hardships of his position, 
all the more keenly because he had a conscience that 
would not permit him to shirk his duty. He had 
used his influence, the weight of his character and 
business repute, to control the action of the Board 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


183 


towards North wick, when the defalcation became 
known, and now he was doubly bound to respond to 
the wishes of the directors in proceeding against him. 
Most of them believed that Northwick was still alive ; 
those who were not sure regarded it as a public duty 
to have him indicted at any rate, and they all voted 
that Hilary should make the necessary complaint. 
Then Hilary had no choice but to obey. Another man 
in his place might have resigned, but he could not, for 
he knew that he was finally responsible for North- 
wick’s escape. 

He made it no less his duty to find out just how 
much hardship it would work Northwick’s daughters, 
and he tried to lend them money. But Suzette an- 
swered for both that her father had left them some 
money when he went away ; and Hilary could only 
send Louise to explain how he must formally appear 
in the legal proceedings ; he allowed Louise to put 
whatever warmth of color she wished into his regrets 
and into his advice that they should consult a lawyer. 
It was not business-like ; if it were generally known 
it might be criticised ; but in the last resort, with a 
thing like that, Hilary felt that he could always tell 
his critics to go to the deuce, and fall back upon a good 
conscience. ^ 

It seemed to Louise, at first, that Suzette was un- 
willing to separate her father from his ofiice, or fully 
to appreciate his forbearance. She treated her own 
father’s course as something above suspicion, as some- 
thing which he was driven to by enemies, whom he 


184 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


would soon have returned to put to confusion, if he 
had lived. It made no difference to her and Adeline 
what was done ; their father was safe, now, and some 
day his name would be cleared. Adeline added that 
they were in the home where he had left them ; it was 
their house, and no one could take it from them. 

Louise compassionately assented to everything. She 
thought Suzette might have been a little more cordial 
in the way she received her father’s regrets. But she 
remembered that Suzette was always undemonstrative, 
and she did not blame her, after her first disappoint- 
ment. She could see the sort of neglect that was al- 
ready falling upon the house, the expression in house- 
keeping terms of the despair that was in their minds. 
The sisters did not cry, but Louise cried a good deal 
in pity for their forlornness, and at last her tears 
softened them into something like compassion for 
themselves. They had her stay to lunch rather 
against her will, but she thought she had better stay. 
The lunch was so badly cooked and so meagre that 
Louise fancied they were beginning to starve them- 
selves, and wanted to cry into her tea-cup. The 
woman who waited wore such dismal black, and went 
about with her eyes staring and her mouth tightly 
pursed, and smelt faintly of horses. It was Mrs. 
Newton ; she had let Louise in when she came, and 
she was the only servant whom the girl saw. 

Suzette said nothing about their plans for the fu- 
ture, and Louise did not like to ask her^ She felt as 
if she was received under a flag of truce, and that 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


185 


there could be no confidence between them. Both of 
the sisters seemed to stand on the defensive with 
her ; but when she started to come away, Suzette put 
on her hat and jacket, and said she would go to the 
avenue gate with her, and meet Simpson, who was 
coming to take Louise back to the station. 

It was a clear day of middle March ; the sun rode 
high in a blue sky, and some jays bragged and jeered 
in the spruces. The frost was not yet out of the 
ground, but the shaded road was dry underfoot. 

They talked at arm’s length of the weather; and 
then Suzette said abruptly, Of course, Louise, your 
father will have to do what they want him to, against 
— papa. I understand that.” 

‘‘Oh, Sue—” 

“ Don’t ! I should wish him to know that I wasn’t 
stupid about it.” 

“ I’m sure,” Louise adventured, “ he would do any- 
thing to help you i ” 

Suzette put by the feeble expression of mere good 
feeling. “We don’t believe papa has done anything 
wrong, or anything he wouldn’t have made right if he 
had lived. We shall not let them take his property 
from us if we can help it.” 

“ Of course not ! I’m sure papa wouldn’t wish you 
to.” 

“ It would be confessing that they were right, and 
we will never do that. But I don’t blame your father, 
and I want him to know it.” 

Louise stopped short and kissed Suzette. In her 


186 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


affectionate optimism it seemed to her for the moment 
that all the trouble was over now. She had never 
realized anything hopelessly wrong in the affair ; it 
was like a misunderstanding that could be explained 
away, if the different people would listen to reason. 

Sue released herself, and said, looking away from 
her friend : It has been hard. He is dead ; but we 
haven’t even been allowed to see him laid in the 
grave.” 

Oh, perhaps,” Louise sobbed out, “ he imH dead ! 
So many people think he isn’t — ” 

Suzette drew away from her in stern offence. Do 
you think that if he were alive he would leave us 
without a word — a sign ? ” 

No, no ! He couldn’t be so cruel I I didn’t 
mean that ! He is dead, and I shall always say it.” 

They walked on without speaking, but at the gate 
Suzette offered to return Louise’s embrace. The tears 
stood in her eyes, as she said, I would like to send 
my love to your mother — if she would care for it.” 

Care for it ! ” 

“ And tell your brother I can never forget what he 
did for us.” 

“ He can never forget that you let him do it,” said 
Louise, with eager gratitude. He would have liked 
to come with me, if he hadn’t thought it might seem 
intrusive.” 

“ Intrusive ! Your brother I ” Sue spoke the words 
as if Matt were of some superior order of beings. 

The intensity of feeling she put into her voice 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


187 


brought another gush of tears into Louise’s eyes. 
‘‘ Matt is good. And I will tell him what you say. 
He will like to hear it.” They looked down the road, 

I but they could not see Simpson coming yet. Don’t 
, wait, Sue,” she pleaded. Do go back ! You will 
be all worn out.” 

' “No, I will stay till your carriage comes,” said 
I Suzette ; and they remained a moment silent together, 
i Then Louise said, “ Matt has got a new fad : a 
' young man that writes on the newspapers — ” 

“ The newspapers ! ” Suzette repeated with an inti- 
mation of abhorrence. 

i “ Oh, but he isn’t like the others,” Louise hastened 
to explain. “Very handsome, and interesting, and 
pale, and sick. He is going to be a poet, but he’s had 
to be a reporter. He’s awfully clever ; but Matt says 
he’s awfully poor, and he has had such a hard time. 
Now they think he won’t have to interview people 
any more — he came to interview papa, the first time; 
and poor papa was very blunt with him ; and then so 
sorry. He’s got some other kind of newspaper place ; 
I don’t know what. Matt liked what he wrote about 
— about, your — troubles, Sue.” 

“ Where was it ? ” asked Sue. “ They were all 
wickedly false and cruel.” 

“ His wasn’t cruel. It was in the Abstract.'^ 

“Yes, I remember. But he said papa had taken 
the money,” Sue answered unrelentingly. 

“ Did he ? I thought he only said if he did. I 
; don’t believe he said more. Matt wouldn’t have liked 


188 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


it SO mucli if he had. He’s in such bad health. But 
he’s awfully clever.” 

The hack came in sight over the rise of ground, 
with Simpson driving furiously, as he always did 
when he saw people. Louise threw her arms round 
her friend again. “Let me go back and stay with 
you. Sue ! Or, come home with me, you and Miss 
North wick. We shall all be so glad to have you, and 
I hate so to leave you here alone. It seems so dread- 
ful ! ” 

“Yes. But it’s easier to bear it here than any- 
where else. Some day all the falsehood will be 
cleared up, and then we shall be glad that we bore 
it where he left us. We have decided what we shall 
do, Adeline and I. We shall try to let the house 
furnished for the summer, and live in the lodge here.” 

Louise looked round at the cottage by the avenue 
gate, and said it would be beautiful. 

“We’ve never used it for any one, yet,” Suzette 
continued, “ and we can move back into the house in 
the winter.” 

This again seemed to Louise an admirable notion, 
and she parted from her friend in more comfort than 
she could have imagined when they met. She car- 
ried her feeling of elation home with her, and was 
able to report Sue in a state of almost smiling pros- 
perity, and of perfect resignation, if not acquiescence, 
in whatever the company should make Hilary do. 
She figured her father, in his reluctance, as a sort of 
ally of the North wicks, and she was disappointed that 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


189 


he seemed to derive so little pleasure from Sue’s ap- 
proval. But he generally approved of all that she 
could remember to have said for him to the North- 
wicks, though he did not show himself so appreciative 
of the situation as Matt. She told her brother what 
Sue had said when she heard of his unwillingness to 
intrude upon her, and she added that now he must 
certainly go to see her. 


XXIL 


A DAY or two later, when Matt Hilary went to 
Hatboro’, he found Wade in his study at the church, 
and he lost no time in asking him, “ Wade, what do 
you know of the Miss North wicks ? Have you seen 
them lately ? ” 

Wade told him how little he had seen Miss North- 
wick, and how he had not seen Suzette at all. Then 
Matt said, ‘‘ I don’t know why I asked you, because I 
knew all this from Louise ; she was up here the other 
day, and they told her. What I am really trying to 
get at is, whether you know anything more about how 
that affair with Jack Wilmington stands. Do you 
know whether he has tried to see her since the trouble 
about her father came out ? 

Adeline Northwick had dropped from the question, 
as usual, and it really related so wholly to Suzette in 
the thoughts of both the young men, that neither of 
them found it necessary to limit it explicitly. 

“ I feel quite sure he hasn’t,” said Wade, though 
I can’t answer positively.” 

“ Then that settles it ! ” Matt walked away to one 
of Wade’s gothic windows, and looked out. When 
he turned and came back to his friend, he said, “ If 
he had ever been in earnest about her, I think he 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


191 


would have tried to see her at such a time, don’t 
you ? ” 

I can’t imagine his not doing it. I never thought 
him a cad.” 

No, nor I.” 

He would have done it unless — unless that 
woman has some hold that gives her command of him. 
He’s shown great weakness, to say the least. But I 
don’t believe there’s anything worse. What do the 
village people believe ? ” 

All sorts of lurid things, some of them ; others be- 
lieve that the affair is neither more nor less than it 
appears to be. It’s a thing that could be just what it 
is in no other country in the world. It’s the phase 
that our civilization has contributed to the physiog- 
nomy of scandal, just as the exile of the defaulter is 
the phase we have contributed to the physiognomy of 
crime. Public opinion here isn’t severe upon Mrs. 
Wilmington or Mr. Northwick.” 

I’m not prepared to quarrel with it on that ac- 
count,” said Matt, with the philosophical serenity 
which might easily be mistaken for irony in him. 
“ The book we get our religion from teaches leniency 
in the judgment of others.” 

‘‘ It doesn’t teach cynical indifference,” Wade sug- 
gested. 

Perhaps that isn’t what people feel,” said Matt. 

‘‘ I don’t know. Sometimes I dread to think how 
deeply our demoralization goes in certain directions.” 

Matt did not follow the lure to that sort of specula- 
13 I 


192 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


tive inquiry he and Wade were fond of. He said, 
with an abrupt return to the personal ground : “ Then 
you don’t think Jack Wilmington need be any further 
considered in regard to her ? ” 

“ In regard to Miss Sue Northwick ? I don’t know 
whether I quite understand what you mean.” 

I mean, is it anybody’s duty — yours or mine — 
to go to the man and find him out ; what he really 
thinks, what he really feels ? I don’t mean, make an 
appeal to him. That would be unworthy of her. But 
perhaps he’s holding back from a mistaken feeling of 
delicacy, of remorse ; when if he could be made to 
see that it was his right, his privilege, to be everything 
to heT now that a man could be to a woman, and in- 
finitely more than any man could hope to be to a happy 
or fortunate woman — What do you think ? He could 
be reparation, protection, safety, everything ! ” 

Wade shook his head. “ It would be useless. Wil- 
mington knows very well that such a girl would never 
let him be anything to her now when he had slighted 
her fancy for him before. Even if he were ever in 
love with her, which I doubt, he couldn’t do it.” 

‘‘No, I suppose not,” said Matt. After a little 
pause, he added, “ Then I must go myself.” 

“ Go, yourself ? What do you mean ? ” Wade 
asked. 

“ Some one must try to make them understand just 
how they are situated. I don’t think Louise did ; I 
don’t think she knew herself, how the legal proceed- 
ings would affect them ; and I think I’d better go and 
make it perfectly clear.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


193 


‘‘ I can imagine it won’t be pleasant,” said Wade. 

No,” said Matt, I don’t expect that. But I in- 
ferred, from what she said to Louise, that she would 
be willing to see me, and I think I had better go.” 

He put his conviction interrogatively, and Wade 
said heartily, “ Why, of course. It’s the only thing,” 
and Matt went away with a face which was cheerful 
with good-will, if not the hope of pleasure. 

He met Suzette in the avenue, dressed for walking, 
and coming forward with the magnificent, haughty 
movement she had. As she caught sight of him, she 
started, and then almost ran toward him. Oh ! 
You ! ” she said, and she shrank back a little, and 
then put her hand impetuously out to him. 

He took it in his two, and bubbled out, Are you 
walking somewhere ? Are you well ? Is your sister 
at home ? Don’t let me keep you ! May I walk 
with you ? ” 

Her smile clouded. I’m only walking here in the 
avenue. How is Louise ? Did she get home safely ? 
It was good of her to come here. It isn’t the place 
for a gay visit.” 

“ Oh, Miss Northwick ! It was good of you to see 
her. And we were very happy — relieved — to find 
that you didn’t feel aggrieved with any of us for what 
must happen. And I hope you don’t feel that I’ve 
taken an advantage of your kindness in coming ? ” 

‘‘ Oh, no ! ” 

‘‘I’ve just been to see Wade.” Matt reddened 
consciously. “ But it doesn’t seem quite fair to have 


194 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


met you where you had no choice but to receive 
me ! ” 

‘‘I walk here every morning,” she returned, eva- 
sively. I have nowhere else. I never go out of 
the avenue. Adeline goes to the village, sometimes. 
But I can’t meet people.” 

‘‘ I know,” said Matt, with caressing sympathy ; 
and his head swam in the sudden desire to take her in 
his arms, and shelter her from that shame and sorrow 
preying upon her. Her eyes had a trouble in them 
that made him ache with pity ; he recognized, as he 
had not before, that they were the translation in femi- 
nine terms, of her father’s eyes. “ Poor Wade,” he 
went on, without well knowing what he was saying, 
‘Hold me that he — he was very sorry he had not 
been able to see you — to do anything — ” 

What would have been the use ? No one can do 
anything. We must bear our burden ; but we needn’t 
add to it by seeing people who believe that — that my 
father did wrong.” 

Matt’s breath almost left him. He perceived that 
the condition on which she was bearing her sorrow 
was the refusal of her shame. Perhaps it could not 
have been possible for one of her nature to accept it, 
and it required no effort in her to frame the theory 
of her father’s innocence ; perhaps no other hypothe- 
sis was possible to her, and evidence had nothing to 
do with the truth as she felt it. 

The greatest comfort we have is that none of you 
believe it ; and your father knew my father better 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


195 


than any one else. I was afraid I didn’t make Louise 
understand how much I felt that, and how much Ade- 
line did. It was hard to tell her, without seeming to 
thank you for something that was no more than my 
father’s due. But we do feel it, both of us ; and I 
would like your father to know it. I don’t blame him 
for what he is going to do. It’s necessary to establish 
my father’s innocence to have the trial. I was very 
unjust to your father that first day, when I thought 
he believed those things against papa. We appreciate 
his kindness in every way, but we shall not get any 
lawyer to defend us.” 

Matt was helplessly silent before this wild confusion 
of perfect trust and hopeless error. He would not 
have known where to begin to set her right ; he did 
not see how he could speak a word without wounding 
her through her love, her pride. 

She hurried on, walking swiftly, as if to keep up 
with the rush of her freed emotions. ‘‘We are not 
afraid but that it will come out so that our father’s 
name, who was always so perfectly upright, and so 
good to every one, will be cleared, and those who have 
accused him so basely will be punished as they de- 
serve.” 

She had so wholly misconceived the situation and 
the character of the impending proceedings that it 
would not have been possible to explain it all to her ; 
but he could not leave her in her error, and he made 
at last an effort to enlighten her. 

“ I think my father was right in advising you to 


196 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


see a lawyer. It won’t be a question of the charges 
against your father’s integrity, but of his solvency. 
The proceedings will be against his estate ; and you 
mustn’t allow yourselves to be taken at a disadvan- 
tage.” 

She stopped. What do we care for the estate, if 
his good name isn’t cleared up ? ” 

“ I’m afraid — I’m afraid,” Matt entreated, that 
you don’t exactly understand.” 

“If my father never meant to keep the money, 
then the trial will show,” the girl returned. 

“ But a lawyer — indeed you ought to see a lawyer ! 
— could explain how such a trial would leave that 
question where it was. It wouldn’t be the case against 
your father, but against yow.” 

“ Against us ? What do they say we have done ? ” 

Matt could have laughed at her heroic misappre- 
hension of the affair, if it had not been for the pity 
of it. “Nothing! Nothing! But they can take 
everything here that belonged to your father — every- 
thing on the place, to satisfy his creditors. The ques- 
tion of his wrong-doing won’t enter. I can’t tell you 
how. But you ought to have a lawyer who would 
defend your rights in the case.” 

“ If they don’t pretend we’ve done anything then 
they can’t do anything to us ! ” 

“ They can take everything your father had in the 
world to pay his debts.” 

“ Then let them take it,” said the girl. “ If he had 
* lived he would have paid them. We will never admit 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


197 


tliat he did anything for us to be ashamed of ; that he 
ever wilfully wronged any one.” 

Matt could see that the profession of her father’s 
innocence was essential to her. He could not know 
how much of it was voluntary, a pure effect of will, in 
fulfilment of the demands of her pride, and how much 
was real belief. He only knew that, whatever it was, 
his wish was not to wound her or to molest her in it, 
but to leave what should be sacred from human touch 
to the mystery that we call providence. It might 
have been this very anxiety that betrayed him, for a 
glance at his face seemed to stay her. 

‘‘ Don’t you think I am right, Mr. Hilary ? ” 

‘‘ Yes, yes ! ” Matt began ; and he was going to say 
that she was right in every way, but he found that his 
own truth was sacred to him as well as her fiction, 
and he said, ‘^I’ve no right to judge your father. It’s 
the last thing I should be willing to do. I certainly 
don’t believe he ever wished to wrong any one if he 
could have helped it.” 

“ Thank you ! ” said the girl. That was not 
what I asked you. I know what my father meant to 
do, and I didn’t need any reassurance. I’m sorry to 
have troubled you with all these irrelevant questions ; 
and I thank you very much for the kind advice you 
have given me.” 

Oh, don’t take it so ! ” he entreated, simply. “ I 
do wish to be of use to you — all the use that the best 
friend in the world can be ; and I see that I have 
wounded you. Don’t take my words amiss ; J’m sure 


198 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


you couldn’t take my will so, if you knew it ! If the 
worst that anybody has said about your father were 
ten times true, it couldn’t change my will, or — ” 

‘‘ Thank you ! Thank you ! ” she said perversely. 

“ I don’t think we understand each other, Mr. Hilary. 
It’s scarcely worth while to try. I think I must say 
good-by. My sister will be expecting me.” She 
nodded, and he stood aside, lifting his hat. She \ 
dashed by him, and he remained staring after her till 
she vanished in the curve of the avenue. She sud- 
denly reappeared, and came quickly back toward him. 

‘‘ I wanted to say that, no matter what you think or 
say, I shall never forget what you have done, and I 
shall always be grateful for it.” She launched these 
words fiercely at him, as if they were a form of defi- 
ance, and then whirled away, and was quickly lost to 
sight again. 


XXIIL 


That evening Adeline said to her sister, at the end 
of the meagre dinner they allowed themselves in these 
days, “Elbridge says the hay is giving out, and we 
have got to do something about those horses that are 
eating their heads off in the barn. And the cows : 
there’s hardly any feed for them.” 

‘‘We must take some of the money and buy feed,” 
said Suzette, passively. Adeline saw by her eyes that 
she had been crying ; she did not ask her why ; each 
knew why the other cried. 

“ I’m afraid to,” said the elder sister. “ It’s going 
so fast, as it is, that I don’t know what we shall do 
pretty soon. I think we ought to sell some of the 
cattle.” 

“We can’t. We don’t know whether they’re ours.” 

“ Not ours ? ” 

“ They may belong to the creditors. We must wait 
till the trial is over.” 

Adeline made no answer. They had disputed 
enough about that trial, which they understood so 
little. Adeline had always believed they ought to 
speak to a lawyer about it ; but Suzette had not been 
willing. Even when a man came that morning with a 
paper which he said was an attachment, and left it 


200 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


with them, they had not agreed to ask advice. For 
one thing, they did not know whom to ask. North wick 
had a lawyer in Boston ; but they had been left to the 
ignorance in which most women live concerning such 
matters, and they did not know his name. 

Now Adeline resolved to act upon a plan of her 
own that she had kept from Suzette because she 
thought Suzette would not like it. Her sister went to 
her room after dinner, and then Adeline put on her 
things and let herself softly out into the night. She 
took that paper the man had left, and she took the 
deeds of the property which her father had given her 
soon after her mother died, while Sue was a little girl. 
He said that the deeds were recorded, and that she 
could keep them safely enough, and she had kept them 
ever since in the box where her old laces were, and 
her mother’s watch, that had never been wound up 
since her death. 

Adeline was not afraid of the dark on the road or 
in the lonely village-streets ; but when she rang at the 
lawyer Putney’s door, her heart beat so with fright 
that it seemed as if it must jump out of her mouth. 
She came to him because she had always heard 
that, in spite of his sprees, he was the smartest law- 
yer in Hatboro’ ; and she believed that he could 
protect their rights if any one could. At the same 
time she wished justice to be done, though they 
should suffer, and she came to Putney, partly because 
she knew he had always disliked her father, and 
she reasoned that such a man would be less likely to 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


201 


advise her against the right in her interest than a 
friendlier person. 

Putney came to the door himself, as he was apt to 
do at night, when he was in the house, and she saw 
him control his surprise at sight of her. Can I see 
— see — see you a moment,” she stammered out, 
“ about some — some law business ? ” 

“Certainly,” said Putney, with grave politeness. 
“ Will you come in ? ” He led the way into the par- 
lor, where he was reading when she rang, and placed 
a chair for her, and then shut the parlor door, and 
waited for her to offer him the papers that rattled in 
her nervous clutch. 

“ It’s this one that I want to show you first,” she 
said, and she gave him the writ of attachment. “ A 
man left it this noon, and we don’t know what it 
means.” 

“ It means,” said Putney, “ that your father’s credi- 
tors have brought suit against his estate, and have at- 
tached his property so that you cannot sell it, or put it 
out of your hands in any way. If the court declares 
him insolvent, then everything belonging to him must 
go to pay his debts.” 

“ But what can we do ? We can’t buy anything to 
feed the stock, and they will suffer,” cried Adeline. 

“ I don’t think long,” said Putney. “ Some one 
will be put in charge of the place, and then the stock 
will be taken care of by the creditors.” 

“ And will they turn us out ? Can they take our 
house ? It is our house — mine and my sister’s ; here 


202 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


are the deeds that my father gave me long ago ; and 
he said they were recorded.” Her voice grew shrill. 

Putney took the deeds, and glanced at the recorder’s 
endorsement before he read them. He seemed to 
Adeline a long time ; and she had many fears till 
he handed them back to her. “The land, and the 
houses, and all the buildings are yours and your sis- 
ter’s, Miss Northwick, and your father’s creditors can’t 
touch them.” 

The tears started from Adeline’s eyes ; she fell 
weakly back in her chair and let them run silently 
down her worn face. After a while Putney said, 
gently, “ Was this all you wanted to ask me ? ” 
“That is all,” Adeline answered, and she began 
blindly to put her papers together. He helped her. 
“How much is there to pay?” she asked, with an 
anxiety she could not keep out of her voice. 

“ Nothing. I haven’t done you any legal service. 
Almost any man you showed those papers to could 
have told you as much as I have.” She tried to gasp 
out some acknowledgments and protests as he opened 
the doors for her. At the outer threshold he said, 
“ Why, you’re alone ! ” 

“ Yes. I’m not at all afraid — ” 

“ I will go home with you.” Putney caught his hat 
from the rack, and plunged into a shabby overcoat 
that dangled under it. 

Adeline tried to refuse, but she could not. She was 
trembling so that it seemed as if she could not have 
set one foot before the other without help. She took 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


203 


his arm, and stumbled along beside him through the 
quiet, early spring night. 

After a while he said, “ Miss Northwick, there’s a 
little piece of advice I should like to give you.” 

‘‘ Well ? ” she quavered, meekly. 

“ Don’t let anybody lead you into the expense of 
trying to fight this case with the creditors. It 
wouldn’t be any use. Your father was deeply in- 
volved — ” 

‘^He had been unfortunate, but he didn’t do any- 
thing wrong,” Adeline hastened to put in, nervously. 

“ It isn’t a question of that,” said Putney, with a 
smile which he could safely indulge in the dark. 
“ But he owed a great deal of money, and his credi- 
tors will certainly be able to establish their right to 
everything but the real estate.” 

“My sister never wished to have anything to do 
with the trial. We intended just to let it go.” 

“ That’s the best way,” Putney said. 

“But I wanted to know whether they could take 
the house and the place from us.” 

“ That was right, and I assure you they can’t touch 
either. If you get anxious, come to me again — as 
often as you like.” 

“ I will, indeed, Mr. Putney,” said the old maid, 
submissively. She let him walk home with her, and 
up the avenue till they came in sight of the house. 
Then she plucked her hand away from his arm, and 
thanked him, with a pathetic little titter. “ I don’t 
know what Suzette would say if she knew I had been 
to consult you,” she suggested. 


204 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


It’s for you to tell her,” said Putney, seriously. 
“ But you’d better act together. You will need all 
your joint resources in that way.” 

“ Oh, I shall tell her,” said Adeline. I’m not sorry 
for it, and I think just as you do, Mr. Putney.” 

Well, I’m glad you do,” said Putney, as if it were 
a favor. 

When he reached home, his wife asked, “ Where in 
the world have you been, Ralph ? ” 

‘‘Oh, just philandering round in the dark a little 
with Adeline North wick.” 

“ Ralph, what do you mean ? ” 

He told her, and they were moved and amused 
together at the strange phase their relation to the 
North wicks had taken. “To think of her coming 
to you, of all people in the world, for advice in her 
trouble ! ” 

“ Yes,” said Putney. “ But I was always a great 
friend of her father’s, you know, Ellen.” 

“ Ralph ! ” 

“ Oh, I may have spent my whole natural life in 
denouncing him as demoralization incarnate, and a 
curse to the community, but I always liked him, 
Ellen. Yes, I loved J. Milton, and I was merely 
waiting for him to prove himself a first-class scoundrel, 
to find out just how much I loved him. I’ve no doubt 
but if we could have him among us again, in the at- 
tractive garb of the State’s-prison inmates, I should 
be hand and glove with brother Northwick.” 


XXIV. 


Adeline’s reasons for going to Putney in their 
trouble had to avail with Suzette against the preju- 
dice they had always felt towards him. In the tangi. 
hie and immediate pressure that now came upon them 
they were glad to be guided by his counsel ; they both 
believed it was dictated by a knowledge of law and a 
respect for justice, and by no regard for them. They 
had a comfort in it for this reason, and they freely 
relied upon it, as in some sort the advice of an honest 
and faithful enemy. They remembered that the last 
evening he was with them, their father had spoken 
leniently of Putney’s infirmity, and admiringly of his 
wasted ability. Now each step they took was at 
his suggestion. They left the great house before the 
creditors were put in possession of the personal prop- 
erty, and went to live in the porter’s lodge at the 
gate of the avenue, which they furnished with the few 
things they could claim for their own out of their 
former belongings, and from the ready money Suzette 
had remaining in her name at the bank. They aban- 
doned everything of value in the house they had left, 
even to their richer dresses and their jewels : they 
preferred to do this, and Putney approved; he saw 


206 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


that it saved them more than it cost them in their 
helpless pride. 

The Newtons continued in their quarters unmo- 
lested ; the furniture was theirs and the building be- 
longed to the Northwick girls, as the Newtons called 
them. Mrs. Newton went every day to help them to 
get going in their new place, and Elbridge and she 
lived there for a few weeks with them, till they said 
they should not be afraid to stay alone. He stood 
guard over their rights, as far as he could ascertain 
them in the spoliation that had to come. He locked 
the avenue gate against the approach of those who 
came to the assignee’s sale, and made them enter and 
take away their purchases by the farm road ; and in 
all lawful ways he rendered himself obstructive and 
inconvenient. 

His deference to the law was paid entirely through 
Putney, whose smartness inspired Elbridge with a 
respect he felt for no other virtue in man. Putney 
arranged with him to take the Northwick place and 
manage it on shares for the Northwick girls ; he got 
for him two of the old horses which Elbridge wanted 
for his work, and one of the cheaper cows. The rest 
of the stock was sold to gentleman farmers round 
about, who had fancies for costly cattle : the horses, 
good, bad and indifferent, were sent to a sale-stable 
in Boston. The greenhouses were stripped of all that 
was valuable in them, and nothing was left upon the 
place, of its former equipment, except the few farm 
implements, a cart or two, and an ancient carryall that 
Putney bid off for Newton’s use. 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


207 


Then, when all was finished, he advertised the house 
to let for a term of years, and failing a permanent ten- 
ant before the season opened, he rented it to an adven- 
turous landlady, who proposed to fill it with summer 
boarders, and who engaged to pay a rental for it 
monthly, in advance, that would enable the Northwick 
girls to live on, in the porter’s lodge, without fear of 
want. For the future, Putney imagined a scheme for 
selling off some of the land next the villas of South 
Hatboro’, in lots to suit purchasers. That summer 
sojourn had languished several years in uncertainty 
of its own fortunes ; but now, by a caprice of the fash- 
ion which is sending people more and more to the 
country for the spring and fall months, it was looking 
up decidedly. Property had so rapidly appreciated 
there, that Putney thought of asking so much a foot 
for the Northwick lands, instead of offering it by the 
acre. 

In proposing to become a land operator, in behalf of 
his clients, he had to reconcile his practice with theo- 
ries he had held concerning unearned land- values ; and 
he justified himself to his crony. Dr. Morrell, on the 
ground that these might be justly taken from such rich 
and idle people as wanted to spend the spring and fall 
at South Hatboro’. The more land at a high price you 
could get into the hands of the class South Hatboro’ 
was now attracting, and make them pay the bulk of the 
town tax, the better for the land that working men 
wanted to get a living on. In helping the Northwick 

girls to keep all they could out of the clutches of their 
14 


208 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


father’s creditors, he held that he was only defending 
their rights ; and any fight against a corporation 
was a kind of holy war. He professed to be getting 
on very comfortably with his conscience, and he 
promised that he would not let it worry other people. 
To Mr. Gerrish he made excuses for taking charge of 
the affairs of two friendless women, when he ought to 
have joined Gerrish in punishing them for their 
father’s sins, as any respectable man would. He asked 
Gerrish to consider the sort of fellow he had always 
been, drinking up his own substance, while Gerrish 
was thriftily devouring other people’s houses, and 
begged him to make allowance for him. 

The anomalous relation he held to the North wicks 
afforded him so much excitement and enjoyment, that 
he passed his devil’s dividend, as he called his quar- 
terly spree. He kept straight longer than his fel- 
low citizens had known him to do for many years. 
But Putney was one of those men who could not be 
credited by people generally with the highest mo- 
tives. He too often made a mock of what people 
generally regarded as the highest motives ; he puzzled 
and affronted them ; and as none of his most intimate 
friends could claim that he was respectable in the or- 
dinary sense of the word, people generally attributed 
interested motives, or at least cynical motives, to him. 
Adeline Northwick profited by a call she made upon 
Dr. Morrell for advice about her dyspepsia, to sound 
him in regard to Putney’s management of her affairs ; 
and if the doctor’s powders had not so distinctly done 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


209 


her good, she might not have been able to rely upon 
the assurance he gave her, that Putney was acting 
wisely and most disinterestedly toward her and her 
sister. 

“ He has such a strange way of talking, sometimes,” 
she said. 

But she clung to Putney, and relied upon him in 
everything, not so much because she implicitly trusted 
him, as because she knew no one else to trust. The 
kindness that Mr. Hilary had shown for them in the 
first of their trouble, had, of course, become impossible 
to both the sisters. He had, in fact, necessarily 
ceased to offer it directly, and Sue had steadily re- 
jected all the overtures Louise made her since they 
last met. Louise wanted to come again to see her ; 
but Sue evaded her proposals ; at last she would not 
answer her letters ; and their friendship outwardly 
ceased. Louise did not blame her ; she accounted for 
her, and pitied and forgave her ; she said it was what 
she herself would do in Sue’s place, but probably if 
she had continued herself, she would not have done 
what Sue did, even in Sue’s place. She remembered 
Sue with a tender constancy when she could no 
longer openly approach her without hurting more than 
she helped ; and before the day of the assignee’s sale 
came, she thought out a scheme which Wade carried 
into effect with Putney’s help. Those things of their 
own that the sisters had meant to sacrifice, were bid- 
den off, and restored to them in such a way that it was 
not possible for them to refuse to take back the 


210 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


dresses, the jewels, the particular pieces of furniture 
which Louise associated with them. 

Each of the sisters dealt with the event in her sort ; 
Adeline simply exulted in getting her things again ; 
Sue gave all hers into Adeline’s keeping, and bade her 
never let her see them. 


PART SECOND. 


I. 

North WICK kept up the mental juggle he had 
used in getting himself away from Hatboro’, and as 
far as Ponkwasset Junction he made believe that he 
was going to leave the main line, and take the branch 
road to the mills. He had a thousand-mile ticket, and 
he had no baggage check to define his destination ; he 
could step off and get on where he pleased. At first 
he let the conductor take up the mileage on his ticket 
as far as Ponkwasset Junction ; but when he got there 
he kept on with the train, northward, in the pretence 
that he was going on as far as Willoughby Junction, 
to look after some business of his quarries. He veri- 
fied his pretence by speaking of it to the conductor 
who knew him ; he was not a person to take conduc- 
tors into his confidence, but he felt obliged to account 
to the man for his apparent change of mind. He was 
at some trouble to make it seem casual and insignifi- 
cant, and he wondered if the conductor meant to in- 
sinuate anything by saying in return that it was a 
pretty brisk day to be knocking round much in a 
stone quarry. Northwick smiled in saying, “ It was, 
rather ; he watched the conductor to see if he should 


212 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


betray any particular interest in the matter when he 
left him. But the conductor went on punching the 
passengers’ tickets, and seemed to forget Northwick 
as soon as he left him. At the next station, North- 
wick followed him out on the platform to find if he 
sent any telegram off. When he had once given way 
to this anxiety, which he knew to be perfectly stupid 
and futile, he had to yield to it at every station. He 
took his bag with him each time he left the car, and 
he meant not to go back if he saw the conductor tele- 
graphing. It was intensely cold, and in spite of the 
fierce heat of the stove at the end of the car, the frost 
gathered thickly on the windows. The train creaked, 
when it stopped and started, as if it were crunching 
along on a bed of dry snow ; the noises of the wheels 
seemed at times to lose their rhythmical cadence, and 
then Northwick held his breath for fear one of them 
might be broken. He had a dread of accident such 
as he had never felt before ; his life had never seemed 
so valuable to him as now ; he reflected that it was 
so because it was to be devoted now to retrieving the 
past in a new field under new conditions. His life, in 
this view, was not his own ; it was a precious trust 
which he held for others, first for his children, and 
then for those whom he was finally to save from loss 
by the miscarriage of his enterprises. He justified 
himself anew in what he was intending ; it presented 
itself as a piece of self-sacrifice, a sacred duty which he 
was bound to fulfil. All the time he knew that he was 
a defaulter who had used the money in his charge, and 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


213 


tampered with the record so as to cover up the fact, 
and that he was now absconding, and was carrying off 
a large sum of money that was not morally his. At 
one of the stations where he got out to see whether 
the conductor was telegraphing, he noticed the con- 
ductor eyeing his bag curiously ; and he knew that he 
believed there was money in it. North wick felt a 
thrill of gratified cunning in realizing how mistaken 
the conductor was ; but he was willing the fellow 
should think he was carrying up money to pay off 
his quarry hands. 

He was impatient to reach the Junction, where this 
conductor would leave the train, and it would continue 
northward in the charge of another man ; he seldom 
went beyond Willoughby on that road, and the new 
conductor would hardly know him. He meant to go 
on to Blackbrook Junction, and take the New Eng- 
land Central there for Montreal ; but he saw the con- 
ductor go to the telegraph office at Willoughby Junc- 
tion, and it suddenly occurred to him that he must not 
go to Montreal by a route so direct that any abscond- 
ing defaulter would be expected to take it. He had 
not the least proof that the conductor’s dispatch had 
anything to do with him ; but he could not help acting 
as if it had. He said good-day to the conductor, as he 
passed him, and he went out of the station, with his 
bag, as if he were going up into the town. He watched 
till he saw the conductor go off in another direction, 
and then he came back, and got aboard the train just 
as it was drawing out of the station. He knew that 


214 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


he was not shadowed in any way, but his consciousness 
of stealth was such that he felt as if he were followed, 
and that he must act so as to baffle and mislead pur- 
suit. 

At Blackbrook, where the train stopped for dinner, 
he was aware that no one knew him, and he ate hun- 
grily ; he felt strengthened and encouraged, and he be- 
gan to react against the terror that had possessed him. 
He perceived that it was senseless and ridiculous ; that ' 
the conductor could not possibly have been telegraph- 
ing about him from Willoughby, and there was as yet 
no suspicion abroad concerning him; he might go 
freely anywhere, by any road. 

But he had now let the New England Central train 
leave without him, and it only remained for him to 
push on to Well water, where he hoped to connect with 
the Boston train for Montreal, on the Union and Do- 
minion road. He remembered that this train divided 
at Well water, and certain cars ran direct to Quebec, 
up through Sherbrooke and Lennoxville. He meant 
to go from Montreal to Quebec, but now he questioned 
whether he had better not go straight on from Well- 
water ; when he recalled the long, all-night ride with- 
out a sleeper, which he had once made on that route 
many summers before, he said to himself that in his 
shaken condition, he must not run the risk of such a 
hardship. If he were to get sick from it, or die, it 
would be as bad as a railroad accident. The word now 
made him think of what Hilary had said ; Hilary who 
had called him a thief. He would show Hilary 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


215 


whether he was a thief or not, give him time; he 
would make him eat his words, and he figured Hilary 
retracting and apologizing in the presence of the whole 
Board; Hilary apologized handsomely, and North- 
wick forgave him, while it was also passing through 
his mind that he must reduce the risks of railroad 
accident to a minimum, by shortening the time. They 
reduced the risk of ocean travel in that way, by re- 
ducing the time, and logically the fastest ship was the 
safest. If he could get to Montreal from Well water 
in four or live hours, when it would take him twelve 
hours to get to Quebec, it was certainly his duty to go 
to Montreal. First of all, he must put himself out of 
danger of every kind. He must not even fatigue him- 
self too much; and he decided to telegraph on to 
Well water, and secure a seat in the Pullman car to 
Montreal. He had been travelling all day in the 
ordinary car, and he had found it very rough. 

It suddenly occurred to him that he must now 
assume a false name ; and he reflected that he must 
take one that sounded like his own, or else he would 
not answer promptly and naturally to it. He chose 
Warwick, and he kept saying it over to himself while 
he wrote his dispatch to the station-master at Well- 
water, asking him to secure a chair in the Pullman. 
He was pleased with the choice he had made; it 
seemed like his own name when spoken, and yet very 
unlike when written. But while he congratulated 
himself on his quickness and sagacity, he was aware 
of something detached, almost alien, in the operation 
K 


216 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


of his mind. It did not seem to be working normally ; 
he could govern it, but it was like something trying 
to get away from him, like a headstrong, restive 
horse. The notion suggested the colt that had fallen 
lame ; he wondered if Elbridge would look carefully 
after it ; and then he thought of all the other horses. 
A torment of heartbreaking homesickness seized him ; 
his love for his place, his house, his children, seemed 
to turn against him, and to tear him and leave him 
bleeding, like the evil spirit in the demoniac among 
the tombs. He was in such misery with his longing 
for his children, that he thought it must show in his 
face ; and he made a feint of having to rise and ar- 
range his overcoat so that he could catch sight of 
himself in the mirror at the end of the car. His face 
betrayed nothing ; it looked, as it always did, like the 
face of a kindly, respectable man, a financially reliable 
face, the face of a leading citizen. He gathered cour- 
age and strength from it to put away the remorse that 
was devouring him. If that was the way he looked 
that was the way he must be ; and he could only be 
leaving those so dear to him for some good purpose. 
He recalled that his purpose was to clear the name 
they bore from the cloud that must fall upon it ; to re- 
habilitate himself ; to secure his creditors from final 
loss. This was a good purpose, the best purpose that 
a man in his place could have ; he recollected that he 
was to be careful of his life and health, because he 
had dedicated himself to this purpose. 

He determined to keep this purpose steadily in 


THE QUALI'JY OF MERCY. 


217 


mind, not to lose thought of it for an instant ; it was 
his only refuge. Then a new anguish seized him ; a 
doubt that swiftly became certainty; and he knew 
that he had signed that dispatch Northwick and not 
Warwick ; he saw just how his signature looked on 
the yellow manilla paper of the telegraph blank. Now 
he saw what a fool he had been to think of sending 
any dispatch. He cursed himself under his breath, 
and in the same breath he humbly prayed to God for 
some way of escape. His terror made it certain to 
him that he would be arrested as soon as he reached 
Well water. That would be the next stop, the con- 
ductor told him, jvhen he halted him with the question 
on his way through the cars. The conductor said they 
were behind time, and Northwick knew by the frantic 
pull of the train that they were running to make up 
the loss. It would simply be death to jump from the 
car ; and he must not die, he must run the risk. In 
his prayer he bargained with God that if He would let 
him escape, he would give every thought, every breath 
to making up the loss of his creditors ; he half prom- 
ised to return the money he was carrying away, and 
trust to his own powers, his business talent in a new 
field, to retrieve himself. He resolved to hide himself 
as soon as he reached Well water ; it would be dark, 
and he hoped that by this understanding with Provi- 
dence he could elude the officer in getting out of the 
car. But if there were two, one at each end of the 
car ? 

There was none, and Northwick walked away from 


218 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


the station with the other passengers, who were going 
to the hotel near the station for supper. In the dim 
light of the failing day and the village lamps, he saw 
with a kind of surprise, the deep snow, and felt the 
strong, still cold of the winterland he had been jour- 
neying into. The white drifts were everywhere ; the 
vague level of the frozen lake stretched away from the 
hotel like a sea of snow ; on its edge lay the excur- 
sion steamer in which North wick had one summer 
made the tour of the lake with his family, long ago. 

He was only a few miles from the Canadian fron- 
tier ; with a rebound from his anxiety, he now exulted 
in the safety he had already expefienced. He re- 
mained tranquilly eating after the departure of the 
Montreal train was cried ; and when he was left al- 
most alone, the head-waiter came to him and said. 
Your train’s just going, sir.” 

‘‘ Thank you,” he answered, I’m going out on the 
Quebec line.” He wanted to laugh, in thinking how 
he had baffled fate. Now, if any inquiry were made 
for him it would be at the Montreal train before it 
started, or at the next station, which was still within 
the American border, on that line. But on the train 
for Quebec, which would reach Stanstead in half an 
hour, he would be safe from conjecture, even, thanks 
to that dispatch asking for a chair on the Montreal 
Pullman. The Quebec train was slow in starting; 
but he did not care ; he walked up and down the plat- 
form, and waited patiently. He no longer thought 
with anxiety of the long all-night ride before him. If 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


219 


he did not choose to keep straight on to Quebec, he 
could stop at Lenoxville or Sherbrooke, and take up 
his journey again the next day. At* Staustead he 
ceased altogether to deal with the past in his thoughts. 
He was now safe from it beyond any possible perad- 
venture, and he began to plan for the future. He had 
prepared himself for the all-night ride, if he should 
decide to take it, with a cup of strong coffee at Well- 
water, and he was alert in every faculty. His mind 
worked nimbly and docilely now, with none of that 
perversity which had troubled him during the day 
with the fear that he was going wrong in it. His 
thought was clear and quick, and it obeyed his will 
like a part of it ; that sense of duality in himself no 
longer agonized him. He took a calm and prudent 
survey of the work before him; and he saw how 
essential it was that he should make no false step, 
but should act at every moment with the sense that 
he was merely the agent of others in the effort to 
retrieve his losses. 


At Stanstead a party of three gentlemen came into 
the car ; and their talk presently found its way through 
Northwick’s revery, at first as an interruption, an 
annoyance, and afterwards as a matter of intensifying 
personal interest to him. They were in very good 
spirits, and they made themselves at home in the car ; 
there were only a few other passengers. They were 
going to Montreal, as he easily gathered, and some 
friends were to join them at the next junction, and go 
on with them. They talked freely of an enterprise 
which they wished to promote in Montreal ; and they 
were very confident of it if they could get the capital. 
One of them said, It was a thing that would have 
been done long ago, if the Yankees had been in it. 
‘‘ Well, we may strike a rich defaulter, in Montreal,” 
another said, and they all laughed. Their laughter 
shocked Northwick ; it seemed immoral ; he remem- 
bered that though he might seem a defaulter, he was 
a man with a sacred trust, and a high purpose. But 
he listened eagerly ; if their enterprise were one that 
approved itself to his judgment, the chance of their 
discussing it before him might be a leading of Provi- 
dence which he would be culpable to refuse. Provi- 
dence had answered his prayer in permitting him to 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


221 


pass the American frontier safely, and North wick 
must not be derelict in fulfilling his part of the agree- 
ment. The Canadians borrowed the brakeman’s lan- 
tern, and began to study a map which they spread out 
on their knees. The one who seemed first among 
them put his finger on a place in the map, and said 
that was the spot. It was in the region just back 
of Chicoutimi. Gold had always been found there, 
but not in paying quantity. It cost more to mine 
it than it was worth ; but with the application of his 
new process of working up the tailings, there was no 
doubt of the result. It was simply wealth beyond the 
dreams *of avarice. 

Northwick had heard that song before ; and he fell 
back in his seat, with a smile which was perhaps too 
cynical for a partner of Providence, but which wa^ 
natural in a man of his experience. He knew some- 
thing about processes to utilize the tailings of gold 
mines which would not otherwise pay for working ; he 
had paid enough for his knowledge : so much that if 
he still had the purchase-money he need not be going 
into exile now, and beginning life under a false name, 
in a strange land. 

By and by he found himself listening again, and he 
he heard the Canadian saying, And there’s timber 
enough on the tract to pay twice over what it will 
cost, even if the mine wasn’t worth a penny.” 

“ Well, we might go down and see the timber, any 
way,” said one of the party who had not yet spoken 
much. “ And then we could take a look at Mark- 


222 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


ham’s soap-mine, too. Unless,” he added, “ you had 
to tunnel under a hundred feet of snow to get at it. A 
good deal like diggin’ the north pole up by the roots, 
wouldn’t it be ? ” 

‘‘ Oh, no ! Oh, no ! ” said he who seemed to 
be Markham, with the optimism of an enthusiast. 
“ There’s no trouble about it. We’ve got some shan- 
ties that we put up about the mouth of the hole in the 
ground we made in the autumn, and you can see the 
hole without digging at all. Or at least you could in 
the early part of January, when I was down there.” 
The hole hadn’t run away ? ” 

No. It was just where we left it.” 

“Well, that’s encouragin’. But I say, Markham, 
how do you get down there in the winter ? ” 

“ Oh ! very easily. Simplest thing in the world. 
Lots of fellows in the lumber trade do it all winter 
long. Do it by sleigh from St. Anne’s, about twenty 
miles below Quebec — from Quebec you have your 
choice of train or sleigh. But I prefer to make a 
clean thing of it, and do it all by sleigh. I take it by 
easy stages, and so I take the long route : there is a 
short cut, but the stops are far between. You make 
your twenty miles to St. Anne from Quebec one day ; 
eighteen to St. Joachim, the next ; thirty-nine to Baie 
St. Paul, the next ; twenty to Malbaie, the next ; then 
forty to Tadoussac ; then eighteen to Riviere Mar- 
guerite. You can do something every day at that 
rate, even in the new snow ; but on the ice of the 
Saguenay, to Haha Bay, there’s a pull of sixty miles ; 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


223 


you’re at Chicoutimi, eleven miles farther, before you 
know it. Good feed, and good beds, all along. You 
wrap up, and you don’t mind. Of course,” Markham 
concluded, ‘Gt isn’t the climate of Stanstead,” as if 
the climate of Stanstead were something like that of 
St. Augustine. 

Well, it somids a mere bagatelle,” said the more 
talkative of the other two, but it takes a week of 
steady travel.” 

“ What is a week on the way to Golconda, if Gol- 
conda’s yours when you get there ? ” said Markham. 
“ Why, Watkins the young spruce and poplar alone 
on that tract are worth twice the price I ask for the 
whole. A pulp-mill, which you could knock together 
for a few shillings, on one of those magnificent water- 
powers, would make you all millionnaires, in a single 
summer.” 

‘^And what would it do in the winter when your 
magnificent water-power was restin’ ? ” 

“ Work harder than ever, my dear boy, and set 
an example of industry to all the lazy habitans in 
the country. You could get your fuel for the cost 
of cutting, and you could feed your spruce and poplar 
in under your furnace, and have it come out paper 
pulp at the other end of the mill.” 

Watkins and the other listener laughed with loud 
haw-haws at Markham’s drolling, and Watkins said, 
“ I say, Markham, weren’t you born on the other side 
of the line ? ” 

‘‘ No. But my father was ; and I wish he’d stayed 
15 


224 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


there till I came. Then I’d be going round with all 
the capitalists of Wall Street fighting for a chance to 
put their money into my mine, instead of wearing out 
the knees of my trousers before you Canucks, begging 
you not to slap your everlasting fortune in the face.” 

They now all roared together again, and at Sher- 
brooke they changed cars. 

North wick had to change too, but he did not try to 
get into the same car with them. He wanted to think, 
to elaborate in his own mind the suggestion for his 
immediate and remoter future which he had got from 
their talk ; and he dreaded the confusion, and possibly 
he dreaded the misgiving, that might come from hear- 
ing more of their talk. He thought he knew, now, 
just what he wanted to do, and he did not wish to be 
swerved from it. 

He felt eager to get on, but he was not impatient. 
He bore very well the long waits that he had to make 
both at Sherbrooke and Richmond ; but when the 
train left the Junction for Quebec at last, he settled 
himself in his seat with a solider content than he had 
felt before, and gave himself up to the pleasure of 
shaping the future, that was so obediently plastic in 
his fancy. The brakeman plied the fierce stove at 
the end of the car with fuel, and Northwick did not 
suffer from the cold that strengthened and deepened 
with the passing night outside, though he was not 
overcoated and booted for any such temperature as 
his fellow-travellers seemed prepared for. They were 
all Canadians, and they talked now and then in their 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


225 


broad-vowel led French, but their voices were low, and 
they came and went quietly at the country stations. 
The car was old and worn, and badly hung ; but in 
spite of all, Northwick drowsed in the fervor of the 
glowing stove, and towards morning he fell into a 
long and dreamless sleep. 

He woke from it with a vigor and freshness that 
surprised him, and found the train pulling into the 
station at Pointe Levis. The sun burned like a soft 
lamp through the thick frost on the car- window; 
when he emerged, he found it a cloudless splendor on 
a world of snow. The vast landscape, which he had 
seen in summer all green from the edge of the mighty 
rivers to the hilltops losing themselves in the blue dis- 
tance, showed rounded and diminished in the immeas- 
urable drifts that filled it, and that hid the streams in 
depths almost as great above their ice as those of the 
currents below. The villages of the huhitans sparkled 
from tinned roof and spire, and the city before him 
rose from shore and cliff with a thousand plumes of 
silvery smoke. In and out among the frozen shipping 
swarmed an active life that turned the rivers into 
highroads, and speckled the expanse of glistening 
white with single figures and groups of men and 
horses. 

It was all gay and bizarre, and it gave Northwick a 
thrill of boyish delight. He wondered for a moment 
why he had never come to Quebec in winter before, 
and brought his children. He beckoned to the walnut- 
faced driver of one of the carrioles which waited out- 


226 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


side the station to take the passengers across the river, 
and tossed his bag into the bottom of the little sledge. 
He gave the name of a hotel in the Upper Town, and 
the driver whipped his tough, long-fetlocked pony over 
the space of ice which was kept clear of snow by dili- 
gent sweeping with fir-tree tops, and then up the steep 
incline of Mountain Hill. The streets were roadways 
from house-front to house-front, smooth, elastic levels 
of thickly-bedded, triply-frozen snow ; and the foot 
passengers, muffled to the eyes against the morning 
cold, came and went among the vehicles in the middle 
of the street, or crept along close to the house-walls, 
to keep out of the light avalanches of an overnight 
snow that slipped here and there from the steep tin 
roofs. 

Northwick’s unreasoned gladness grew with each 
impression of the beauty and novelty. It quickened 
associations of his earliest days, and of the winter 
among his native hills. He felt that life could be very 
pleasant in this latitude ; he relinquished the notion he 
had cherished at times of going to South America with 
his family in case he should finally fail to arrange 
with the company for his safe return home ; he fore- 
cast a future in Quebec where he could build a new 
home for his children, among scenes that need not be 
all so alien. This did not move him from his fixed 
intention to retrieve himself, though it gave him the 
courage of indefinitely expanded possibilities. He was 
bent upon the scheme he had in mind, and as soon as 
he finished his breakfast he went out to prepare for it. 


IIL 


The inn he had chosen was one which he remem- 
bered, from former visits to Quebec, as having seemed 
a resort of old world folk of humble fortunes. He got 
a room, and went to it long enough to count the 
money he had with him, and find it safe. Then he 
took one of the notes from the others, and went to a 
broker’s to get it changed. 

The amount seemed to give the broker pause; but 
he concerned himself only with the genuineness of the 
greenback, and after a keen glance at Northwick’s 
unimpeachable face, he paid over the thousand dollars 
in Canadian bills. ‘‘ We used to make your country- 
men give us something over,” he said with a smile 
in recognition of Northwick’s nationality. 

‘‘ Yes ; that’s all changed, now,” returned North- 
wick. Do I look so very American ? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, I don’t know that,” said the broker, with an 
airy English inflection. suppose it’s your hard 

hat, as much as anythfng. We all wear fur caps in 
such weather.” 

‘‘Ah, that’s a good idea,” said Northwick. He 
spoke easily, but with a nether torment of longing to 
look at the newspaper lying open on the counter. He 
could see that it was the morning paper ; there might 


228 


THE QUALITY OF MEECY. 


be something about him in it. The thought turned 
him faint ; but he knew that if the paper happened to 
have anything about him in it, any rumor of his 
offence, any conjecture of his flight, he could not bear 
it. He could bear to keep himself deaf and blind to 
the self he had put behind him, but he could not bear 
anything less. The papers seemed to thrust them- 
selves upon him ; newsboys followed him up in the 
street with them ; he saw them in all the shops, where 
he went for the fur cap and fur overcoat he bought, 
for the underclothing and changes of garments that he 
had to provide ; for the belt he got to put his money 
in. This great sum, which he dared not bank, must 
be carried about with him ; it must not leave him night 
or day ; it must be buckled into the chamois belt and 
worn round his waist, sleeping and waking. The belt 
was really for gold, but the forty-two thousand-dollar 
notes, which were not a great bulk, would easily go 
into it. 

He returned to his hotel and changed them to it, 
and put the belt on. Then he felt easier, and he 
looked up the landlord to ask about the route he 
wished to take. He found, as he expected, that it 
was one very commonly travelled by lumber mer- 
chants going down into the wopds to look after their 
logging camps. Some took a sleigh from Quebec; 
but the landlord said it was just as well to go by train 
to St. Anne, and save that much sleighing ; you would 
get enough of it then. Northwick thought so too, 
and after the early dinner they gave him he took the 
cars for St. Anne. 


THE QUALITir OP MERCY. 


229 


He was not tired; he was curiously buoyant and 
strong. He thought he might get a nap on the way ; 
but he remained vividly awake ; and even that night 
he did not sleep much. He felt again that pulling of 
his mind, as if it were something separate from him, 
and were struggling to get beyond the control of his 
will. The hotel in the little native village was very 
good in its way ; he had an excellent supper and an 
easy bed ; but he slept brokenly, and he was awake 
long before the early breakfast which he had ordered 
for his start next day. The landlord wished to per- 
suade him that there was no need of such great haste ; 
it was only eighteen miles to St. Joachim, where he 
was to make his first stop, and the road was so good 
that he would get there in a few hours. He had bet- 
ter stop and visit the church, and see the sick people’s 
offerings, which they left there every year, in gratitude 
to the saint for healing them of their maladies. The 
landlord said it was a pity he could not come some 
time at the season of the pilgrimage ; his countrymen 
often came then. Northwick perceived that in spite 
of bis fur cap and overcoat, and his great Canadian 
boots, he was easily recognizable for an American to 
this man, though he could not definitely decide whether 
his landlord was French or Irish, and could not tell 
whether it was in earnest or in irony that he invited 
him to try St. Anne for any trouble he happened to 
be suffering from. But he winced at the suggestion, 
while his heart leaped at the fantastic thought of 
hanging that money-belt at her altar, and so easing 


230 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


himself of all his pains. He grotesquely imagined the 
American defaulters in Canada making a pilgrimage 
to St. Anne, and devoting emblems of their moral 
disease to her : forged notes, bewitched accounts, false 
statements. At the same time, with that part of him 
which seemed obedient, he asked the landlord if he 
knew of the gold discoveries on the Chicoutimi River, 
and tried to account for himself as an American specu- 
lator going to look into the matter in his own way and 
at his own time. 

In spite of his uncertainty about the landlord in 
some ways, Northwick found him a kindly young fel- 
low. He treated Northwick with a young fellow’s 
comfortable deference for an elderly man, and helped 
him forget the hurts to his respectability which rankled 
so when he remembered them. He explained the 
difference between the two routes from Malbaie on, 
and advised him to take the longer, which lay through 
a more settled district, where he would be safer in 
case of any mischance. But if he liked to take the 
shorter, he told him there were good campes, or log- 
house stations, every ten or fifteen miles, where he 
would find excellent meals and beds, and be well cared 
for by people who kept them in the winter for travel- 
lers. Ladies sometimes made the journey on that 
route, which the government had lately opened, and 
the mails were carried that way ; he could take pas- 
sage with the mail-carriers. 

This fact determined Northwick. He shrank from 
trusting himself in government keeping, though he 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


231 


knew he would be safe in it. He said he would go 
by Tadoussac ; and the landlord found a carriole 
driver, with a tough little Canadian horse, who agreed 
to go the whole way to Chicoutimi with him. 

After an early lunch the man came, with the low- 
bodied sledge, set on runners of solid wood, and deeply 
bedded with bearskins for the lap and back. The day 
was still and sunny, like the day before, and the air 
which drove keenly against his face, with the rush 
of the carriole, sparkled with particles of frost that 
sometimes filled it like a light shower of snow. The 
drive was so short that he reached St. Joachim at 
noon, and he decided to push on part of the way to 
Baie St. Paul after dinner. His host at St. Joachim 
approved of that. “You goin* have snow to-night 
and big drift to-morrow,” he said, and he gave his 
driver the name of an habitant whom they could stop 
the night with. The driver was silent, and he looked 
sinister ; North wick thought how easily the man might 
murder him on that lonely road and make off with the 
money in his belt ; how probably he would do it if he 
dreamed such wealth was within his grasp. But the 
man did not notice him after their journey began, 
except once to turn round and say, “ Look out you’ 
nose. You’ goin’ freeze him.” For the rest he talked 
to his horse, which was lazy, and which he kept urging 
forward with “ Marche done ! Marche done ! ” finally 
shortened to “ ’Ch’ done ! ’Ch’ done ! ” and repeated and 
repeated at regular intervals like the tolling of a bell. 
It made Northwick think of a bell-buoy off a ledge of 


232 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


rocks, which he had spent a summer near. He wished 
to ask the man to stop, but he reflected that the waves 
would not let him stop ; he had to keep tolling. 

North wick started. He must be going out of his 
mind, or else he was drowsing. Perhaps he was 
freezing, and this was the beginning of the death 
drowse. But he felt himself warm under his furs, 
where he touched himself, and he knew he had 
merely been dreaming. He let himself go again, 
and arrived at his own door in Hatboro’. He saw 
the electric lights through the long piazza windows, 
and he was going to warn Elbridge again about that 
colt’s shoes. Then he heard a sharp fox-like barking, 
and found that his carriole had stopped at the cabin of 
the habitant who was to keep him over night. The 
open doorway was filled with children ; the wild- 
looking dogs leaping at his horse’s nose were in a 
frenzy of curiosity and suspicion. 

North wick rose from his nap refreshed physically, 
but with a desolate and sinking heart. The vision of 
his home had taken all his strength away with it ; but 
from his surface consciousness he returned the greet- 
ing of the man with a pipe in his mouth and what 
looked like a blue stocking on his head, who welcomed 
him. It was a poor place within, but it had a comfort 
and kindliness of its own, and it was well warmed 
from the great oblong stove of cast-iron set in the 
partition of the two rooms. The meal that the house- 
wife got him was good and savory, but he had no 
relish for it, and he went early to bed. He did not 


tup: quality of mercy. 


233 


1 

( understand much French, and he could not talk with 
, the people, but he heard them speak of him as an 
^ old man, with a sort of surprise and pity at his being 
there. He felt this surprise and pity, too ; it seemed 
such a wild and wicked thing that he should be driven 
away from his home and children at his age. He tried 
to realize what had done it. 

The habitant had given Northwick his best bed, in 
his large room ; he went with his wife into the other, 
and they took two or three of the younger children ; 
the rest all scattered up into the loft ; each bade the 
guest a well-mannered good-night. Before Northwick 
slept he heard his host get up and open the outer 
door. Some Indians came in and lay down before 
the fire with the carriole driver. 


IV. 


In the morning, Northwick did not want to rise; 
but he forced himself ; and that day he made the rest 
of the stage to Baie St. Paul. It snowed, but he got 
through without much interruption. The following 
day, however, the drifts had blocked the roads so that 
he did not make the twenty miles to Malbaie till after 
dark. He found himself bearing the journey better 
than he expected. He was never so tired again as 
that first day after St. Anne. He did not eat much 
or sleep much, but he felt well. The worst was that 
the breach between his will and his mind seemed to 
grow continually wider : he had a sense of the rift 
being like a chasm stretching farther and farther, the 
one side from the other. At first his mind worked 
clearly but disobediently ; then he began to be aware 
of a dimness in its record of purposes and motives. 
At times he could not tell where he was going, or 
why. He reverted with difficulty to the fact that he 
had wished to get as far as possible, not only beyond 
pursuit, but beyond the temptation to return volunta- 
rily and give himself up. He knew, in those days 
before the treaty, that he was safe from extradition; 
but he feared that if a detective approached he would 
yield to him, and go back, especially as he could not 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


235 


always keep before himself the reasons for not going 
back. When from time to time these reasons escaped 
him, it seemed as if nothing could be done to him in 
case he went home and restored to the company the 
money he had brought away. It needed a voluntary 
operation of logic to prove that this partial restitution 
would not avail ; that he would be arrested, and con- 
victed. He would not be allowed to go on living with 
his children in his own house. He would be taken 
from them, and put in prison. 

He made an early start for Tadoussac, after a wake- 
ful night. His driver wished to break the forty mile 
journey midway, but Northwick would not consent. 
The road was not so badly drifted as before, and they 
got through a little after nightfall. Northwick re- 
membered the place because it was here that the 
Saguenay steamer lay so long before starting up the 
river. He recognized in the vague night-light the 
contour of the cove, and the hills above it, with the 
villages scattered over them. It was twenty years 
since he had made that trip with his wife, who had 
been nearly as long dead, but he recalled the place 
distinctly, and its summer effect ; it did not seem much 
lonelier now than it seemed in the summer. The 
lamps shone from the windows where he had seen 
them then, when he walked about a little just after 
supper ; the village store had a group of hahitans and 
half-breeds about its stove, and there was as much show 
of life in the streets as there used to be at the same 
hour and season in the little White Mountain village 


236 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


where his boyhood was passed. It did not seem so 
bad ; if Chicoutimi was no worse he could live there 
well enough till he could rehabilitate himself. He 
imagined bringing his family there after his mills had 
got successfully going; then probably other people 
from the outside world would be living there. 

He ate a hearty supper, but again he did not sleep 
well, and in the night he was feverish. He thought 
how horrible it would be if he were to fall sick there ; 
he might die before he could get word to his children 
and they reach him. He thought of going back to 
Quebec, and sailing for Europe, and having his chil- 
dren join him there. They could sell the place at 
Hatboro’, and with what it brought, and with what he 
had, they could live comfortably in some cheap country 
which had no extradition treaty with the United States. 
He remembered reading of a defaulter who went to a 
little republic called San Marino, somewhere in Italy, 
and was safe there ; he found the President treading 
his own grape vats ; and it cost nothing to live there, 
though it was dull, and the exile became so homesick 
that he returned and gave himself up. He wondered 
that he had not thought of that place before ; then he 
reflected that no ships could make their way from 
Quebec to the sea before May, at the earliest. He 
would be arrested if he left any American port, or ar- 
rested as soon as he reached England. He remem- 
bered the advertisement of a line of steamships be- 
tween Quebec and Brazil ; he must wait for the St. 
Lawrence to open, and go to Brazil, and in the morn- 
ing must go back to Quebeq, 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


237 


But in the morning he felt so much better that he 
decided to keep on to Chicoutimi. He could not bear 
the thought of being found out by detectives at Quebec, 
and by reporters who would fill the press with para- 
graphs about him. He must die to the world, to his 
family, before he could hope to revisit either. 

The morning was brilliant with sunlight, and the 
glare of the snow hurt his eyes. He went to the store 
to get some glasses to protect them, and he bought 
some laudanum to make him sleep that night, if he 
should be wakeful again. It was sixty miles to Haha 
Bay, but the road on the frozen river was good, and 
he could do a long stretch of it. From Riviere Mar- 
guerite, he should travel on the ice of the Saguenay, 
and the going would be smooth and easy. 

All the landscape seemed dwarfed since he saw it 
in that far-off summer. The tops of the interminable 
solitudes that walled the river in on both sides appeared 
lower, as if the snow upon them weighed them down, 
but doubtless they had grown beyond their real height 
in his memory. They had lost the mystery of the 
summer aspect when they were dimmed with rain or 
swathed in mist ; all their outlines were in plain sight, 
and the forests that clothed them from the shore to 
their summits were not that unbroken gloom which 
they had seemed. The snow shone through their 
stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless 
extent of white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it. 
North wick had a fantastic sense of his own minuteness 
and remoteness. He thought of the photograph of a 


238 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnh 
fied, and of a fly that happened to traverse the ex- 
panse of plaster-like white between the ranges of 
extinct volcanoes. 

At times the cliffs rose from the river too sheer for 
the snow to lodge on ; then their rocky faces shone 
harsh and stern ; and sometimes the springs that 
gushed from them in summer were frozen in long 
streams of ice, like the tears bursting from the source 
of some Titanic grief. These monstrous icicles, blear- 
ing the visage of the rock, which he figured as nothing 
but icicles, affected Northwick with an awe that he 
nowhere felt except when his driver slowed his carriole 
in front of the great Capes Trinity and Eternity, and 
silently pointed at them with his whip. He had no 
need to name them, the fugitive would have known 
them in another planet. It was growing late; the 
lonely day was waning to the lonely night. While 
they halted, the scream of a catamount broke from 
the woods skirting the bay between the capes, and 
repeated itself in the echo that wandered from depth 
to depth of the frozen wilderness, and seemed to 
die wailing away at the point where it first tore the 
silence. 

Here and there, at long intervals, they passed a point 
or a recess where a saw-mill stood, with a few log 
houses about it, and with signs of human life in the 
smoke that rose weakly on the thin, dry air from their 
chimneys, or in the figures that appeared at the door- 
ways as the carriole passed. At the next of these 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


239 


beyond the capes, the driver proposed to stop and 
pass the night, and Northwick consented. He felt 
worn out by his day’s journey ; his nerves were spent 
as if by a lateral pressure of the lifeless desert he 
had been travelling through, and by the stress of his 
thoughts, the intensity of his reveries. His mind ran 
back against his will, and dwelt with his children. By 
this time, long before this time, they must be wild 
with anxiety about him ; by this time their shame 
must have come to poison their grief. He realized it 
all, and he realized that he could not, must not help 
them. He must not go back to them if ever he was 
to live for them again. But at last he asked why he 
should live, why he should not die. There was lauda- 
num enough in that bottle to kill him. 

As he walked up from the carriole at the river’s 
edge to the door of the saw-miller’s cabin, he drew the 
cork of the vial, and poured out the poison ; it fol- 
lowed him a few steps, a black dribble of murder on 
the snow, that the miller’s dog smelt at and turned 
from in offence. That night he could not sleep again ; 
toward morning, when all the house was snoring, he 
gave way to the sobs that were bursting his heart. 
He heard the sleepers, men and dogs, start a little in 
their dreams ; then they were still, and he fell into a 
deep sleep. 

They let him sleep late ; and he had a dream of 
himself, which must have been caused by the nascent 
consciousness of the going and coming around him. 

People were talking of him, and one said how old he 
16 L 


240 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


was ; and another looked at his long, white beard 
which flowed down over the blanket as far as ^ his 
waist. He told them that he wore it so that they 
should not know him when he got home ; and he 
showed them how he could take it off and put it on at 
pleasure. He started awake, and found his carriole 
driver standing over him. 

“ You got you’ sleep hout, no ? ” 

“What time is it? ” said North wick, stupidly, scan- 
ning the man to make sure that it was he, and wait- 
ing for a full sense of the situation to reach him. 

“ Nine o’clock,” said the man, and he turned away. 

North wick got up, and found the place empty of the 
men and dogs. A woman, who looked like a half- 
breed, brought him his breakfast of fried venison and 
bean-coffee ; her little one held by her skirt, and 
stared at him. He thought of Elbridge’s baby that he 
had seen die. It seemed ages ago. He offered the 
child a shilling; it shyly turned its face into its 
mother’s dress. The driver said, “ ’E do’n’ know what 
money is, yet,” but the mother seemed to know ; she 
showed her teeth, and took it for the child. North- 
wick sat a moment thinking what a strange thing it 
was not to know what money was ; it had never 
occurred to him before ; he asked himself a queer 
question. What was money ? The idea of it seemed 
to go to pieces, as a printed word does when you look 
steadily at it, and to have no meaning. It affected 
him as droll, fantastic, like a piece of childish make- 
believe, when the woman took some more money from 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


241 


him for his meals and lodging. But that was the way 
the world was worked. You could get anything done 
for money ; it was the question of demand and supply ; 
nothing more. He tried to think where money came 
in when he went out to see Elbridge’s sick boy ; when 
Eibridge left the dead child to drive him to the sta- 
tion. It was something else that came in there j but 
that thing and money were the same, after all : he had 
proved his love for his children by making money for 
them ; if he had not loved them so much he would 
not have tried to get so much money, and he would 
not have been where he was. 

His mind fought away from his control, as the 
sledge slipped along over the frozen river again. It 
was very cold, but the full sun on his head afflicted 
him like heat. It was the blaze of light that beat up 
from the snow, too. His head felt imponderable ; and 
yet he could not hold it up. It was always sinking 
forward ; and he woke from naps without being sure 
that he had been asleep. 

He intended to push through that day to Chicoutimi ; 
but his start was so late that it seemed to him as if 
they would never get to Haha Bay. When they ar- 
rived, late in the afternoon, all sense of progress 
thither faded away ; it was as if the starting and stop- 
ping were one, or contained in the same impulse. It 
might be so if he kept on eleven miles further to Chi- 
coutimi, but he would not be able to feel it so at the 
beginning ; the wish could involve its accomplishment 
only at the end. He said to himself that this was un- 


242 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


reasonable ; it was a poor rule that would not work 
both ways. 

This ran through his mind in the presence of the 
old man who bustled out of the door of the cabin where 
his carriole had stopped. It was larger than most of 
the other cabins of the place, which Northwick re- 
membered curiously well, some with their logs bare, 
and some sheathed in birch-bark. He remembered 
this man, too, when his white moustache, which 
branched into either ear, was a glistening brown, and 
the droop of his left eyelid was more like a voluntary 
wink. But the gayety of his face was the same, and 
his welcome was so cordial, that a fear of recognition 
went through Northwick. He knew the man for the 
talkative Canadian who had taken him and his wife 
a drive over the hills around the bay, in the morning, 
when their boat arrived, and afterwards stopped with 
them at this cabin, and had them in to drink a glass 
of milk. Northwick’s wife liked the man, and said 
she would like to live in such a house in such a place, 
and should not be afraid of the winter that he told her 
.was so terrible. It was almost as if her spirit were 
there ; but Northwick said to himself that he must not 
let the man know that he had ever seen him before. 
The resolution cost him something, for he felt so 
broken and weak that he would have liked to claim 
his kindness as an old acquaintance. He would have 
liked to ask if he still caught wild animals for show- 
men, and how his trade prospered ; if he had always 
lived at Haha Bay since they met. But he was the 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


243 


more decided to ignore their former meeting because 
the man addressed him in English at once, and appar- 
ently knew him for an American. Perhaps other 
defaulters had been there before ; perhaps the mines 
had brought Americans there prospecting. 

“ Good morning, sir ! ” cried the Canadian. I am 
glad to see you ! Let me ’elp you hout, sir. Well, 
it is a pleasure to speak a little English with some 
one ! The English close hup with the river in the 
autumn, but it open early this year. I ’ope you are a 
sign of many Americans. They are the life of our 
country. Without the Americans we could not live. 
No, sir. Not a day. Come in, come in. You will 
find you’ room ready for you, sir.” 

Northwick hung back suspiciously. Were you 
expecting me ? ” he asked. 

“No one ! ” cried the man, with a shrug and open- 
ing of the hands. “ But hall the travellers they stop 
with Bird, and where there are honly two rooms, ’eat 
with one stove between the walls, their room is always 
ready. Do me the pleasure ! ” He set the door 
open, and bowed Northwick in. “ Baptiste ! ” he 
called to the driver over his shoulder, “ take you’ ’orse 
to the stable.” He added a long queue of unintelligible 
French to his English, and the driver responded, 
“ Hall right.” 

“ I am the only person at Haha Bay who speaks 
English,” he said, in the same terms he had used 
twenty years before, when he presented himself to 
Northwick and his wife on their steamboat, and asked 


244 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


them if they would like to drive before breakfast. 
‘‘But you must know me? Bird — Oiseau’^ You 
have been here before ? ” 

“ No,” said Northwick, with one lie for all. The 
man, with his cheer and gayety, was even terribly 
familiar ; and Northwick could have believed that 
the room and the furniture in it were absolutely un- 
changed. There was the little window that he knew 
opened on the poor vegetable garden, with its spindling 
corn, and its beans for soup and coffee. There was 
the chair his wife had sat in to look out on the things ; 
but for the frost on the pane he could doubtless see 
them growing now. 

He sank into the chair, and said to himself that he 
should die there, and it would be as well, it would be 
easy. He felt very old and weak ; and he did not 
try to take off the wraps which he had worn in the 
sledge. He wished that he might fall so into his 
grave, and be done with it. 


V. 


Bird walked up and down the room, talking; he 
seemed overjoyed with the chance, and as if he could 
not forego it for a moment. Well, sir, I wish that I 
could say as much ! But I have been here forty years, 
hoff and on. I am born at Quebec ” — in his tremu- 
lous inattention. North wick was aware that the man 
had said the same thing to him all those years before, 
with the same sidelong glance for the effect of the fact 
upon him — and I came here when I was twenty. 
Now I am sixty. Hall the Americans know me. I 
used to go into the bush with them for bear. Lots of 
bear in the bush when I first came ; now they get 
pretty scarce. I have the best moose-dog. But I 
don’t care much for the hunting now ; I am too hold. 
That’s a fact. I am sixty ; and forty winters I ’ave 
pass at Haha Bay. You know why it is call Haha 
Bay? It is the hecho. Well, I don’t hear much 
ha-ha nowadays round this bay. But it is pretty here 
in the summer ; yes, very pretty. Prettier than Chi- 
coutimi ; and more gold in the ’ills.^’ 

He let his bold, gay eye rest confidently on North- 
wick, as if to say he knew what had brought him 
there, and he might as well own the fact at once ; and 
Northwick tried to get his mind to grapple with his 


246 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


real motive. But liis mind kept pulling away from 
him, like that unruly horse, and he could not manage 
it. He knew, in that self which seemed apart from 
his mind, that it would be a very good thing to let the 
man suppose he was there to look into the question of 
the mines; but there was something else that seemed 
to go with that intention ; something like a wish to 
get away from the past so remotely and so completely 
that no rumor of it should reach him till he was willing 
to let it ; to be absent from all who had known him so 
long that no one of them would know him if he saw 
him. He was there not only to start a pulp-mill, but 
to grow a beard that should effectually disguise him. 
He recalled how he had looked with that long beard 
in his dream ; he put his hand to his chin and felt the 
eight days’ stubble there, and he wondered how much 
time it would take to grow such a beard. 

Bird went on talking. “ I know that Chicoutimi 
Company. I told Markham about the gold when he 
was here for bear. He is smart ; but he don’t know 
hevery thing. You think he can make it pay with 
that invention ? I doubt, me. There is one place in 
those ’ills,” and Bird came closer to Northwick, and 
dropped his voice, “ where you don’t ’ave to begin with 
the tailings. I know the place. But what’s the 
good ? All the same, you want capital.” 

He went to the shelf in the wall above the stove, 
and took a pipe, which he filled with tobacco, and then 
lie drew some coals out on the stove hearth. But be- 
fore he dropped one of them on his pipe with his 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


247 


horny thumb and finger, he asked politely, ‘‘ You hob- 
ject to the smoking? ” 

Northwick said he did not, and Bird said, “ It is 
one of three things you can do here in the winter ; 
smoke the pipe, cut the wood, court the ladies.” 
Northwick remembered his saying that before, too, 
and how it had made his wife laugh. “ I used to do 
all three. Now I smoke the pipe. Well, while you 
are young, it is all right, and it is fun in the woods. 
But I was always ’omesick for Quebec, more or less. 
You know what it is to be ’omesick.” 

The word pierced Northwick through the vagary 
which clothed his consciousness like a sort of fog, 
and made his heart bleed with self-pity. 

“Well, I been ’omesick forty years, and I don’t 
know what for, any more. I been back to Quebec ; 
it is not the same. You know ’ow they pull down 
those city gate? What they want to do that for? 
The gate did not keep the stranger hout; it let 
them in ! And there were too many people dead ! 
Now I think I am ’omesick just to get away from 
here. If I had some capital — ten, fifteen thou- 
sand dollars — I would hopen that mine, and take 
out my hundred, two hundred thousand dollar, and 
then, Good-by, Haha Bay ! I would make it hecho 
like it never hecho before. I don’t want nothing to 
work up the tailings of my mine, me ! There is gold 
enough there to pay, and I can hire those hahitans 
cheap, like dirt. What is their time worth ? The 
bush is cut away : they got nothing to do. It is the 


248 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. - 


time of a setting ’en, as you Americans say, their 
time.” 

Bird smoked away for a little while in silence, and 
then he seemed aware, for the first time, that North- 
wick had not taken off his wraps, and he said, hospit- 
ably, ‘‘ I ’ope you will spend the night with me here ? ” 

Northwick said, Thank you, I don’t know. Is it 
far to Chicoutimi ? ” He knew, but he asked, hoping 
the man would exaggerate the distance, and then he 
would not have to go. 

‘‘ It is eleven mile, but the road is bad. Drifted.” 

I will wait till to-morrow,” said Northwick, and 
he began to unswathe and unbutton, but so feebly 
that Bird noticed. 

Allow me ! ” he said, putting down his pipe, and 
coming to his aid. He was very gentle and light- 
handed, like a woman ; but Northwick felt one touch 
on the pouch of his belt, and refused further help. 

He let his host carry his two bags into the next 
room for him ; the bag that he had brought with the 
few things from home, when he pretended that he 
was coming away for a day or two, and the bag that 
he had got in Quebec to hold the things he had to buy 
there. When Bird set them down beside his bed he 
could not bear to see the bag from home, and he pushed 
it under out of sight. Then he tumbled himself on the 
bed, and pulled the bearskin robe that he found on it 
up over him, and fell into a thin sleep, that was not 
so different from his dim waking that he was sure it 
had been sleep when Bird came back with a lamp. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


249 


“ Been ’aving a little nap ? ” he asked, looking gay ly 
down on Nortliwick’s bewildered face. “Well, that 
is all right ! We have supper, now, pretty soon. You 
hungry ? Well, in a ’alf-hour.” 

He went out again, and Northwick, after some 
efforts, made out to rise. His skull felt sore, and his 
arms as if they had been beaten with hard blows. 
But after he had bathed his face and hands in the 
warm water Bird had brought with the lamp, he found 
himself better, though he was still wrapped in that 
cloudy uncertainty of himself and of his sleeping or 
waking. He saw some pictures about on the coarse, 
white walls : the Seven Stations of the Cross, in col- 
ored prints ; a lithograph of Indians burning a Jesuit 
priest. Over the bed’s head hung a chromo of Our 
Lady, with seven swords piercing her heart ; beside 
the bed was a Parian crucifix, with the figure of Christ 
writhing on it. 

These things made Northwick feel very far and 
strange. His simple and unimaginative nature could 
in nowise relate itself to this alien faith, this alien 
language. He heard soft voices of women in the next 
room, the first that he had heard since he last 
heard his daughters’. A girl’s voice singing was 
severed by a door that closed and then opened to 
let it be heard a few notes more, and again closed. 

But he found Bird still alone in the next room 
when he returned to it. “ Well, now, we go to 
supper as soon as Father £tienne comes. He is our 
curate — our minister — here. And he eats with me 


250 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


when he heat anywhere. I tell ’im bought to have 
my appetite, if he wants to keep up his spiritual 
strength. The body is the foundation of the soul, 
no ? Well, you let that foundation tumble hin, and 
then where you got you’ soul, heigh ? But Father 
£tienne speaks very good English. Heducate at 
Rome. I am the only other educated man at Haha 
Bay. You don’t ’appen to have some papers in you’ 
bag ? French ? English ? It is the same ! ” 

“Papers ? No! ” said Northwick, with horror and 
suspicion. “ What is in the papers ? ” 

“ That is what I like to find hout,” said Bird, spread- 
ing his hands with a shrug. 

The outer door opened, and a young man in a 
priest’s long robe came in. Bird introduced his guest, 
and Northwick shook hands with the priest, who had 
a smooth, regular face, with beautiful, innocent eyes, 
like a girl’s. He might have been twenty-eight or 
twenty-nine ; he had the spare figure of a man under 
thirty who leads an active life ; his features were re- 
fined by study and the thought of others. When he 
smiled the innocence of his face was more than girl- 
ish, it was childlike. Points of light danced in his 
large, soft, dark eyes ; an effect of trusting, alluring 
kindness came from his whole radiant visage. 

Northwick felt its charm with a kind of fear. He 
shrank away from the priest, and at the table he left 
the talk to him and his host. They supped in a room 
opening into a sort of wing ; beyond it was a small 
kitchen, from which an elderly woman brought the 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


251 


dishes, and wlifere that girl whom he heard singing 
kept trilling away as if she were excited, like a 
canary, by the sound of the frying meat. 

Bird said, by way of introduction, that the Avoman 
was his niece ; but he did not waste time on her. He 
began to talk up his conjecture as to North wick’s 
business with the priest, as if it were an ascertained 
fact. Northwick fancied his advantage in leaving him 
to it. They discussed the question of gold in the hills, 
which the young father treated as an old story of 
faded interest, and Bird entered into with the fervor 
of fresh excitement. The priest spoke of the poor 
return from the mines at Chaudiere, but Bird claimed 
that it was different here. Northwick did not say 
anything : he listened and watched them, as if they 
were a pair of confidence-men trying to work him. 
The priest seemed to be anxious to get the question 
off the personal ground into the region of the abstract, 
and Northwick believed that this was part of his game, 
a ruse to throw him from his guard, and commit him 
to something. He made up his mind to get away as 
early as he could in the morning ; he did not think it 
was a safe place. 

‘‘ Very well ! ” the priest cried, at one point. Sup- 
pose you had the capital you wish. And suppose you 
had taken out all the gold you say is there, and you 
were rich. What would you do ? ” 

“ What I do ? ” Bird struck the table with his fist. 
“ Leave Haha Bay to-morrow morning ! ” 

“ And where would you go ? ” 


252 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Go ? To Quebec, to London, to Paris, to Rome, 
to the devil ! Keep going ! ” 

The young father laughed a laugh as innocent as his 
looks, and turned with a sudden appeal to North wick. 
“ Tell me a little about the rich men in your land of 
millionnaires ! How do they find their happiness ? 
In what ? What is the secret of joy that they have 
bought with their money ? ” 

“ I don’t know what you mean,” said Northwick, 
with a recoil deeper into himself after the first flush of 
alarm at being addressed. 

‘‘ Where do they live ? ” 

Northwick hesitated, and the priest laid his hand on 
Bird’s shoulder, as if to restrain a burst of information 
from him. 

I suppose most of them live in New York.” 

All the time ? ” 

No. They generally have a house at the seaside, 
at Newport or Bar Harbor, for the summer, and one 
at Lenox or Tuxedo for the fall ; and they go to Flor- 
ida for the winter, or Nice. Then they have their 
yachts.” 

‘‘ The land is not large enough for their restless- 
ness ; they roam the sea. My son,” said the young 
priest to the old hunter, you can have all the advan- 
tage of riches at the expense pf a gypsies’ van ! ” He 
laughed again in friendly delight at Bird’s supposed 
discomfiture ; and touched him lightly, delicately, as 
before. ‘‘ It is the same in Europe ; I have seen it 
there, too.” Bird was going to speak, but the priest 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


253 


stayed him a moment. But how did your rich peo« 
pie get their millions Not like those rich people in 
Europe, by inheritance ? ’’ 

“Very few/^ said North wick, sensible of -a remnant 
of the pride he used to feel in the fact, hidden about 
somewhere in his consciousness. “ They made it.” 

“ How ? Excuse me ! ” 

“ By manufacturing, by speculating in railroad 
stocks, by mining, by the rise in land-values.” 

“ What causes the land to rise in value ? ” 

“ The demand for it. The necessity.” 

“ Oh ! The need of others. And when a man 
gains in stocks, some other man loses. No ? Do the 
manufacturers pay the operatives all they earn ? Are 
the miners very well paid and comfortable ? I have 
read that they are miserable. Is it so ? ” 

Northwick was aware that there were good and 
valid answers to all these questions which the priest 
seemed to be asking rather for the confusion of Bird 
than as an expression of his own opinions ; but in his 
dazed intelligence he could not find the answers. 

Bird roared out, “ Haw ! Do not regard him ! He 
is a man of the other world — an angel — a mere im- 
becile — about business ! ” The priest threw himself 
back in his chair and laughed tolerantly, showing his 
beautiful teeth. “ All those rich men they give work 
to the poor. If I had a few thousand dollars to hopen 
up that place in the ’ill, I would furnish work to every 
man in Haha Bay — to hundreds. Are the miners 
more miserable than those hahitans^ eh ? ” 


254 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ The good God seems to think so,” returned the 
priest, seriously. At least, he has put the gold in 
the rocks so that you cannot get it out. What would 
you give the devil to help you ? ” he asked, with a 
smile. 

“ When I want to make a bargain with the devil, I 
don’t come to you, Pere Etienne ; I go to a notary. 
You ever hear, sir,” said Bird, turning to Northwick, 
‘‘ about that notary at Montreal — ” 

“ I think I will go to bed,” said Northwick, ab- 
ruptly. ‘‘ I am not feeling very well — I am very 
tired, that is.” He had suddenly lost account of what 
and where he was. It seemed to him that he was 
both there and at Hatboro’ ; that there were really 
two Northwicks, and that there was a third self some- 
where in space, conscious of them both. 

It was this third Northwick whom Bird and the 
priest would have helped to bed if he had suffered 
them, but who repulsed their offers. He made shift 
to undress himself, while he heard them talking in 
French with lowered voices in the next room. Their 
debate seemed at an end. After a little while he 
heard the door shut, as if the priest had gone away. 
Afterwards he appeared to have come back. 


VL 


The talk went on all night in North wick’s head 
between those two Frenchmen, who pretended to be 
of contrary opinions, but were really leagued to get 
the better of him, and lure him on to put his money 
into that mine. In the morning his fever was gone; 
but he was weak, and he could not command his 
mind, could not make it stay by him long enough to 
decide whether any harm would come from remaining 
over a day before he pushed on to Chicoutimi. He 
tried to put in order or sequence the reasons he had 
for coming so deep into the winter and the wilderness ; 
but when he passed from one to the next, the former 
escaped him. 

Bird looked in with his blue woollen bonnet on his 
head, and his pipe in his mouth, and he removed each 
to ask how Northwick was, and whether he would 
like to have some breakfast ; perhaps he would like a 
cup of tea and some toast. 

Northwick caught eagerly at the suggestion, and in 
a few minutes the tea was brought him by a 3"oung 
girl, whom Bird called Virginie ; he said she was his 
grand-niece, and he hoped that her singing had not 
disturbed the gentleman : she always sang; one could 
hardly stop her ; but she meant no harm. He stayed 


256 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


to serve Northwick himself, and Northwick tried to 
put away the suspicion Bird’s kindness roused in him. 
He was in such need of kindness that he did not wish 
to suspect it. Nevertheless, he watched Bird nar- 
rowly, as he put the milk and sugar in his tea, and he 
listened warily when he began to talk of the priest 
and to praise him. It was a pleasure. Bird said, for 
one educated man to converse with another ; and 
Father ^fitienne and he often maintained opposite 
sides of a question merely for the sake of the discus- 
sion ; it was like a game of cards where there were 
no stakes ; you exercised your mind. 

Northwick understood this too little to believe it ; 
when he talked, he talked business ; even the jokes 
among the men he was used to meant business. 

‘‘Then you haven’t really found any gold in the 
hills ? ” he asked, slyly. 

“ My faith, yes ! ” said Bird. “ But,” he added 
sadly, “ perhaps it would not pay to mine it. I will 
show you when you get up. Better not go to Chi- 
coutimi to-day ! It is snowing.” 

“ Snowing ? ” Northwick repeated. “ Then I can’t 
go ! ” 

“ Stop in bed till dinner. That is the best,” Bird 
suggested. “ Try to get some sleep. Sleep is youth. 
When we wake we are old again, but some of the 
youth stick to our fingers. No ? ” He smiled gayly, 
and went out, closing the door softly after him, and 
Northwick drowsed. In a dream Bird came back to 
him with some specimens from his gold mine. North- 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


257 


wick could see that the yellow metal speckling the 
quartz was nothing but copper pyrites, but he thought 
it best to pretend that he believed it gold ; for Bird, 
while he stood over him with a lamp in one hand, was 
feelins: with the other for the buckle of Northwick’s 
belt, as he sat up in bed. He woke in fright, and the 
fear did not afterwards leave him in the fever which 
now began. He had his lucid intervals, when he was 
aware that he was wisely treated and tenderly cared 
for, and that his host and all his household were his 
devoted watchers and nurses ; when he knew the doc- 
tor and the young priest, in their visits. But all this 
he perceived cloudily, and as with a thickness of some 
sort of stuff between him and the fact, while the illu- 
sion of his delirium, always the same, was always 
poignantly real. Then the morning came when he 
woke from it, when the delirium was past, and he 
knew what and where he was. The truth did not 
dawn gradually upon him, but possessed him at once. 
His first motion was to feel for his belt ; and he found 
it gone. He gave a deep groan. * 

The blue woollen bonnet of the old huqter appeared 
through the open doorway, with the pipe under the 
branching gray moustache. The eyes of the men met. 

‘‘ Well,’’ said Bird, you are in you’ senses at 
last ! ” Northwick did not speak, but his look con- 
veyed a question which the other could not misin- 
terpret. He smiled. “ You want you’ belt ? ” He 
disappeared, and then reappeared, this time full 
length, and brought the belt . to Northwick. “ You 


258 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


think you are among some Yankee defalcator ? ” he 
asked, for sole resentment of the suspicion which 
Northwick’s anguished look must have imparted. 
“ Count it. I think you find it hall right.” But as 
the sick man lay still, and made no motion to take 
up the belt where it lay across his breast. Bird asked, 
“ You want me to count it for you ? ” 

Northwick faintly nodded, and Bird stood over him, 
and told the thousand-dolla^r bills over, one by one, 
and then put them back in the pouch of the belt. 

“ Now, I think you are going to get well. The 
doctor ’e say to let you see you’ money the first thing. 
Shall I put it hon you ? ” 

Northwick looked at the belt; it seemed to him 
that the bunch the bills made would hurt him, and he 
said, weakly, “ You keep it for me.” 

“ Hall right,” said Bird, and he took it away. He 
went out with a proud air, as if he felt honored by the 
trust Northwick had explicitly confirmed, and sat down 
in the next room, so as to be within call. 

Northwick made the slow recovery of an elderly 
man ; and by the time he could go out of doors with- 
out fear of relapse, there were signs in the air and in 
the earth of the spring, which when it comes to that 
northern land possesses it like a passion. The grass 
showed green on the low bare hills as the snow un- 
covered them ; the leaves seemed to break like an 
illumination from the trees ; the south wind blew back 
the birds with its first breath. The jays screamed 
in the woods ; the Canadian nightingales sang in 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


259 


the evening and the early morning when he woke 
and thought of his place at Hatboro’, where the 
robins’ broods must be half-grown by that time. It 
was then the time of the apple-blossoms there ; with 
his homesick inward vision he saw the billowed tops 
of his orchard, all pink-white. He thought how the 
apples smelt when they first began to drop in August 
on the clean straw that bedded the orchard aisles. It 
seemed to him that if he could only be there again for 
a moment he would be willing to spend the rest of his 
life in prison. As it was, he was in prison ; it did not 
matter how wide the bounds were that kept him from 
his home. He hated the vastness of the half world 
where he could come and go unmolested, this bond- 
age that masked itself as such ample freedom. To be 
shut out was the same as to be shut in. 

In the first days of his convalescence, while he was 
yet too weak to leave his room, he planned and exe- 
cuted many returns to his home. He went back by 
stealth, and disguised by the beard which had grown 
in his sickness, and tried to see what change had come 
upon it ; but he could never see it different from what 
it was that clear winter night when he escaped from 
it. This bafilecL and distressed him, and strengthened 
the longing at the bottom of his heart actually to 
return. He thought that if he could once look on the 
misery he had brought upon his children he could bear 
it better ; he complexly flattered himself that it would 
not be so bad in reality as it was in fancy. Some- 
times when this wish harassed him, he said to himself. 


260 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


to still it, that as soon as the first boat came up tlie 
river from Quebec, he would go down with it, and 
arrange to surrender himself to the authorities, and 
abandon the struggle. 

But as he regained his health, he began to feel that 
this was a rash and foolish promise : he thought he 
saw a better way out of his unhappiness. It appeared 
a misfortune once more, and not so much a fault of 
his. He was restored to this feeling in part by the 
respect, the distinction which he enjoyed in the little 
village, and which pleasantly recalled his consequence 
among the mill-people at Ponkwasset. When he was 
declared out of danger he began to receive visits of 
polite sympathy from the heads of families, who 
smoked round him in the evening, and predicted a 
renewal of his youth by the fever he had come 
through safely. Their prophecies were interpreted 
by Bird and Pere ifitienne, as with one or other of 
these he went to repay their visits. Everywhere, the 
inmates of the simple, clean little houses, had begun 
early to furbish them up for the use of their summer 
boarders, while they got ready the shanties behind 
them for their own occupancy ; but everywhere North - 
wick was received with that pathetic deference which 
the poor render to those capable of bettering their 
condition. The secret of the treasure he had brouglit 
with him remained safe with the doctor and the priest, 

^ and with Bird who had discovered it with them ; but 
Bird was not the man to conceal from his neighbors 
the fact that his guest was a great American capital- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


261 


ist, who had come to develop the mineral, agricul 
tnral, and manufacturing interests of Haha Bay on 
the American scale ; and to enrich the whole region, 
buying land of those who wished to sell, and employing 
all those who desired to work. If he was impatient 
for the verification of these promises by Northwick, he 
was too polite to urge it ; and did nothing worse than 
brag to him as he bragged about him. He probably 
had his own opinion of Northwick’s reasons for the 
silence he maintained concerning himself in all re- 
spects ; he knew from the tag fastened to the bag 
Northwick had bought in Quebec that his name was 
Warwick, and he knew from Northwick himself that 
he was from Chicago ; beyond this, if he conjectured 
that he was the victim of financial errors, he smoothly 
kept his guesses to himself and would not mar the 
chances of good that Northwick might do with his 
money by hinting any question of its origin. The 
American defaulter was a sort of hero in Bird’s fancy ; 
he had heard much of that character; he would 
have experienced no shock at realizing him in North- 
wick ; he would have accounted for Northwick, and 
excused him to himself, if need be. The doctor ob- 
served a professional reticence ; his affair was with 
Northwick’s body, which he had treated skilfully. He 
left his soul to Pere Etienne, who may have had his 
diffidence^ his delicacy, in dealing with it, as the soul 
of a Protestant and a foreigner. 


VIL 


It took the young priest somewhat longer than it 
would have taken a man of Northwick’s own language 
and nation to perceive that his gentlemanly decorum 
and grave repose of manner masked a complete igno=- 
ranee of the things that interest cultivated people, 
and that he was merely and purely a business man, 
a figment of commercial civilization, with only the 
crudest tastes and ambitions outside of the narrow 
circle of money-making. He found that he had a 
pleasure in horses and cattle, and from hints which 
Northwick let fall, regarding his life at home, that he 
was fond of having a farm and a conservatory with 
rare plants. But the flowers were possessions, not 
passions ; he did not speak of them as if they afforded 
him any artistic or scientific delight The young 
priest learned that he had put a good deal of money 
in pictures ; but then the pictures seemed to have be- 
come investments, and of the nature of stocks and 
bonds. He found that this curious American did 
not care to read the English books which Bird 
offered to lend him out of the little store of gifts 
and accidents accumulated in the course of years from 
bountiful or forgetful tourists; the books in French 
Pere Etienne proposed to him, Northwick said he did 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


263 


not know how to read. He showed no liking for 
music, except a little for the singing of Bird’s niece, 
Virginie, but when the priest thought he might care to » 
understand that she sang the ballads which the first 
voyagers had brought from France into the wilderness, 
or which had sprung out of the joy and sorrow of its 
hard life, he saw that the fact said nothing to North- 
wick, and that it rather embarrassed him. The Ameri- 
can could not take part in any of those discussions of 
abstract questions which the priest and the old woods- 
man delighted in, and which they sometimes tried 
to make him share. He apparently did not know 
what they meant. It was only when Pere Etienne 
gave him up as the creature of a civilization too ugly 
and arid to be borne, that he began to love him as a 
brother ; when he could make nothing of Northwick’s 
mind, he conceived the hope of saving his soul. 

Pere Etienne felt sure that Northwick had a soul, 
and he had his misgivings that it was a troubled one. 
He, too, had heard of the American defaulter, who 
has a celebrity of his own in Canada penetrating to dif- 
ferent men with different suggestion, and touching here 
and there a pure and unworldly heart, such as Pere 
fitienne bore in his breast, with commiseration. The 
young priest did not conceive very clearly of the 
make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive 
and mysterious stranger of committing ; but he imag- 
ined that the great sum of money he knew him 
possessed of, was spoil of some sort ; and he believed 
that Northwick’s hesitation to employ it in any way 


264 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


was proof of an uneasy conscience in its possession. 
Why had he come to that lonely j^lace in midwinter 
with a treasure such as that ; and why did he keep the 
money by him, instead of putting it in a bank ? Pere 
]Etienne talked* these questions over with Bird and the 
doctor, and he could find only one answer to them. 
He wondered if he ought not to speak to North wick, 
and delicately offer him the chance to unburden his 
mind to such a friend as only a priest could be to such 
a sinner. But he could not think of any approach 
sufficiently delicate. Northwick was not a Catholic, 
and the church had no hold upon him. Besides, he 
had a certain plausibility and reserve of demeanor 
that forbade suspicion, as well as the intimacy neces- 
sary to the good which Pere Etienne wished to do the 
lonely and silent man. Northwick was in those days 
much occupied with a piece of writing, which he al- 
ways locked carefully into his bag when he left his 
room, and which he copied in part or in whole again 
and again, burning the rejected drafts in the hearth- 
fire that had now superseded the stove, and stirring 
the carbonized paper into ashes, so that no word was 
left distinguishable on it. 

One day there came up the river a bateau from 
Tadoussac, bringing the news that the ice was all out 
of the St. Lawrence. ‘‘ It will not be long time, now,’’ 
said Bird, before we begin to see you’ countrymen. 
The steamboats come to Haha Bay in the last of 
June.” 

Northwick responded to the words with no visible 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


265 


sensation. His sphinx-like reticence vexed Bird more 
and more, and intolerably deepened the mystification 
of his failure to do any of the things with his capital 
which Bird had promised himself and his fellow-citi- 
zens. He no longer talked of going to Chicoutimi, 
that was true, and there was not the danger of his 
putting his money into Markham’s enterprise there ; 
but neither did he show any interest or any curiosity 
concerning Bird’s discovery of the precious metal at 
Haha Bay. Bird had his delicacy as well as Pere 
Etienne, and he could not thrust himself upon his 
guest, even with the intention of making their joint 
fortune. 

A few days later there came to Pere Etienne a 
letter, which, when he read it, superseded the interest 
in North wick, which Bird felt gnawing him like a per- 
petual hunger. It was from the cure at Rimouski, 
where Pere Etienne’s family lived, and it brought 
word that his mother, who had been in failing health 
all winter, could not long survive, and so greatly de- 
sired to see him, that his correspondent had asked 
their superior to allow him to replace Pere Etienne at 
Haha Bay, while he came to visit her. Leave had 
been given, and Pere £tienne might expect his friend 
very soon after his letter reached him. 

Where is Rimouski ? ” Northwick asked, when 
he found himself alone with the priest that evening. 

It is on the St. Lawrence. It is the last and first 
point where the steamers touch in going and coming 
between Quebec and Liverpool.” Pere ifitienne had 


266 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


been weeping, and his heart was softened and embol- 
dened by the anxiety he felt. It is my native vil- 
lage — where I lived till I went to make my studies 
in the Laval University. It is going home for me. 
Perhaps they will let me remain there.” He added, 
by an irresistible impulse of pity and love, I wish 
you were going home, too, Mr. Warwick ! ” 

I wish I were ! ” said North wick, with a heavy 
sigh. But I can’t — yet.” 

“ This is a desert for you,” Pere ilStienne pressed on. 
“ I can see that. I have seen how solitary you are.” 

“ Yes. It’s lonesome,” Northwick admitted. 

My. son,” said the young priest to the man who 
was old enough to be his father, and he put his hand 
on Northwick’s, where it lay on his knee, as they sat 
side by side before the fire, is there something you 
could wish to say to me ? Something I mi^ht do to 
help you?” 

In a moment all was open between them, and they 
knew each other’s meaning. “ Yes,” said Northwick, 
and he felt the wish to trust in the priest and to be 
ruled by him well up like a tide of hot blood from his 
heart. It sank back again. This pure soul was too 
innocent, too unversed in the world and its ways to 
know his offence in its right proportion ; to know it 
as Northwick himself knew it ; to be able to account 
for it and condone it. The affair, if he could under- 
stand it at all, would shock him ; he must blame it as 
relentlessly as Northwick’s own child would if her 
love did not save him. With the next word he closed 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


267 


that which was open between them, a rift in his clouds 

that heaven itself had seemed to look throuah. I 
• . ° 
have a letter — a letter that I wish you would take 

and mail for me in Rimouski.’’ 

“ I will take it with great pleasure,” said the priest, 
but he had the sadness of a deep disappointment in 
his tone. 

North wick was disappointed, too ; almost injured. 
He had something like a perception that if Pere 
Etienne had been a coarser, commoner soul, he could 
have told him everything, and saved his own soul by 
the confession. 

About a month after the priest’s departure the first 
steamboat came up the Saguenay from Quebec. By 
this time Bird was a desperate man. North wick was 
still there in his house, with all that money which 
he would not employ in any way ; at once a tempta- 
tion and a danger if it should in any manner become 
known. The wandering poor, who are known to 
the piety of the hahitans as the Brethren of Christ, 
were a terror to Bird, in their visits, when they came 
by day to receive the charity which no one denies 
them ; he felt himself bound to keep a watchful eye 
on this old Yankee, who was either a rascal or a mad- 
man, and perhaps both, and to see that no harm came 
to him; and when he heard the tramps prowling 
about at night, and feeling for the alms that kind 
people leave out-doors for them, he could not sleep. 
The old hunter neglected his wild-beast traps, and 
suffered his affairs to fall into neglect ; but it was 


268 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


not his failing appetite, or his broken sleep alone 
that wore upon him. The disappointment with liis 
guest that was spreading through the community, 
involved Bird, and he thought his neighbors looked 
askance at him : as if they believed he could have 
moved Northwick to action, if he would. Northwick 
could not have moved himself. He was like one 
benumbed. He let the days go by, and made no 
attempt to realize the schemes for the retrieval of his \ 
fortunes that had brought him to tliat region. 

The sound of the steamboat’s whistle was a joyful 
sound to Bird. He rose and went into Northwick’s 
room. Northwick was awake ; he had heard the 
whistle, too. 

‘‘ Now, Mr. Warwick, or what you’ name,” said 
Bird, with trembling eagerness, “ that is the boat. I 
want you take you’ money and go hout my ’ouse. 
Yes, sir. Now ! Pack you’ things. Don’t wait for 
breakfast. You get breakfast on board. Go 1 


VIIL 


The letter which Pere !]fitienne posted for North- 
wick at Rimouski was addressed to the editor of the 
Boston Events^ and was published with every advan- 
tage which scare-heading could invent. A young 
journalist newly promoted to the management was 
trying to give the counting-room proofs of his effi- 
ciency in the line of the Events’' greatest successes, 
and he wasted no thrill that the sensation in his hands 
was capable of imparting to his readers. Yet the 
effect was disappointing, not only in the figure of 
the immediate sales, but in the cumulative value of 
the recognition of the fact that the Events had been 
selected by Northwick as the best avenue for ap- 
proaching the public. The Abstract^ in copying and 
commenting upon the letter, skilfully stabbed its es- 
teemed contemporary with an acknowledgment of 
its prime importance as the organ of the American 
defaulters in Canada ; other papers, after questioning 
the document as a fake, made common cause in treat- 
ing it as a matter of little or no moment. In fact, 
there had been many defalcations since Northwick’s ; 
the average of one a day in the despatches of the 
Associated Press had been fully kept up, and several 
of these had easily surpassed his in the losses involved. 


270 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


and in the picturesqueness of the circumstances. Peo- 
ple generally recalled with an effort the supremely 
tragic claim of his case through the rumor of his 
death in the railroad accident ; those who distinctly 
remembered it experienced a certain disgust at the 
man’s willingness to shelter himself so long in the 
doubt to which it had left not only the public, but 
his own family, concerning his fate. 

The evening after the letter appeared, Hilary was 
dining one of those belated Englishmen who some- 
times arrive in Boston after most houses are closed 
for the summer on the Hill and the Back Bay. Mrs. 
Hilary and Louise were already with Matt at his 
farm for a brief season before opening their own 
house at the shore, and Hilary was living en gar<^on. 
There were only men at the dinner, and the talk at first 
ran chiefly to question of a sufficient incentive for North- 
wick’s peculations ; its absence was the fact which all 
concurred in owning. In deference to his guest’s igno- 
rance of the matter, Hilary went rapidly over it from 
the beginning, and as he did so the perfectly typical 
character of the man and of the situation appeared in 
clear relief. He ended by saying “ It isn’t at all a 
remarkable instance. There is nothing peculiar about 
it. Northwick was well off and he wished to be 
better off. He had plenty of other people’s money 
in his hands which he controlled so entirely that he 
felt as if it were his own. He used it and he lost it. 
Then he was found out, and ran away. That’s all.” 

^‘Then, as I understand,” said the Englishman, 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


271 


with a strong impression that he was making a joke, 
‘‘ this Mr. Northwick was not one of your most re- 
markable men.” 

Everybody laughed obligingly, and Hilary said, 
“ He was one of our least remarkable men.” Then, 
spurred on by that perverse impulse which we Amer- 
cans often have to make the worst of ourselves to an 
Pniglishman, he added, The defaulter seems to be 
taking the place of the self-made man among us. 
North wick’s a type, a little differentiated from thou- 
sands of others by the rumor of his death in the first 
place, and now by this unconsciously hypocritical and 
nauseous letter. He’s what the commonplace Amer- 
ican egotist must come to more and more in finance, 
now that he is abandoning the career of politics, and 
wants to be rich instead of great.” 

“ Really ? ” said the Englishman, 

Among Hilary’s guests was Charles Bellingham, a 
bachelor of pronounced baldness, who said he would 
come to meet Hilary’s belated Englishman, in quality 
of bear-leader to his cousin-in-law, old Bromfield Co- 
rey, a society veteran of that period when even the 
swell in Boston must be an intellectual man. He 
was not only old, but an invalid, and he seldom left 
town in summer, and liked to go out to dinner when- 
ever he was asked. Bellingham came to the rescue 
of the national repute in his own fashion. “ I can’t 
account for your not locking up your spoons, Hilary, 
when you invited me, unless you knew where you 

could steal some more.” 

18 M* 


272 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Ah, it isn’t quite like a gentleman’s stealing a few 
spoons,” old Corey began, in the gentle way he liad, 
and with a certain involuntary sibilation through the 
gaps between his front teeth. It’s a much more 
heroic thing than an ordinary theft ; and I can’t let 
you belittle it as something commonplace because it 
happens every day. So does death ; so does birth ; 
but they’re not commonplace.” 

They’re not so frequent as defalcation with us, 
quite — especially birth,” suggested Bellingham. 

‘‘ No,” Corey went on, every fact of this sort is 
preceded by the slow and long decay of a moral 
nature, and that is of the most eternal and tragical 
interest; and” — here Corey broke down in an old 
man’s queer, whimpering laugh, as the notion struck 
him — “ if it’s very common with us, I don’t know 
but we ought to be proud of it, as showing that we ex- 
cel all the rest of the civilized world in the proportion 
of decayed moral natures to the whole population. 
But I wonder,” he went on, “ that it doesn’t produce 
more moralists of a sanative type than it has. Our 
bad teeth have given us the best dentists in the world ; 
our habit of defalcation hasn’t resulted yet in any 
ethical compensation. Sewell, here, used to preach 
about such things, but I’ll venture to say we shall 
have no homily on Northwick from him next 
Sunday.” 

The Bev. Mr. Sewell suffered the thrust in patience. 
“ What is the use ? ” he asked, with a certain sadness. 
‘‘The preacher’s voice is lost in his sounding-board 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


273 


nowadays, when all the Sunday newspapers are cry- 
ing aloud from twenty-eight pages illustrated.’’ 

“ Perhaps they are our moralists,” Corey suggested. 

“ Perhaps,” Sewell assented. 

By the way, Hilary,” said Bellingham, “ did you 
ever know who wrote that article in the Abstract, when 
North wick’s crookedness first appeared ? ” 

“Yes,” said Hilary. “It was a young fellow of 
twenty-four or five.” 

“ Come off ! ” said Bellingham, in a slang phrase 
then making its way into merited favor. “What’s 
become of him ? I haven’t seen anything else like it 
in the Abstract 

“ No, and I’m afraid you’re not likely to. The 
fellow was a reporter on the paper at the time ; but 
he happened to have looked up the literature of defal- 
cation, and they let him say his say.” 

“ It was a very good say.” 

“ Better than any other he had in him. They let 
him try again on different things, but he wasn’t up to 
the work. So the managing editor said — and he 
was a friend of the fellow’s. He was too literary, I 
believe.” 

“ And what’s become of him ? ” asked Corey. 

“You might get him to read to you,” said Belling- 
ham to the old man. He added to the company, 
“ Corey uses up a fresh reader every three months. 
He takes them into his intimacy, and then he finds 
their society oppressive.” 

“Why,” Hilary answered with a little hesitation, 


274 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


he was out of health, and Matt had him up to his 
farm.” 

Is he Matt’s only beneficiary ? ” Corey asked, 
with a certain tone of tolerant liking for Matt. “ I 
thought he usually had a larger colony at Vardley.” 

Well, he has,” said Hilary. But when his 
mother and sister are visiting him, he has to reduce their 
numbers. He can’t very well turn his family away.” 

“ He might board them out,” said Bellingham. 

“ Do you suppose,” asked Sewell, as if he had not 
noticed the turn the talk had taken, ‘‘ that Northwick 
has gone to Europe ? ” 

“ I’ve no doubt he wishes me to suppose so,” said 
Hilary, ‘‘ and of course we’ve had to cable the author- 
ities to look out for him at Moville and Liverpool, but 
I feel perfectly sure he’s still in Canada, and expects 
to make terms for getting home again. He must be 
horribly homesick.” 

Yes ? ” Sewell suggested. 

Yes. Not because he’s a man of any delicacy of 
feeling, or much real affection for his family. I’ve no 
doubt he’s fond of them, in a way, but he’s fonder of 
himself. You can see, all through his letter, that he’s 
trying to make interest for himself, and that he’s quite 
willing to use his children if it will tell on the public 
sympathies. He knows very well that they’re pro- 
vided for. They own the place at Hatboro’ ; he 
deeded it to them long before his crookedness is known 
to have begun ; and his creditors couldn’t touch it if 
they wished to. If he had really that fatherly affec- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


275 


tion for them, which he appeals to in others, he 
wouldn’t have left them in doubt whether he was 
alive or dead for four or five months, and then dragged 
them into an open letter asking forbearance in their 
name, and promising, for their sake, to right those he 
had wronged. The thing is thoroughly indecent.” 

Since the fact of Northwick’s survival had been 
established beyond question by the publication of his 
letter, Hilary’s mind in regard to him had undergone 
a great revulsion. It relieved itself with a sharp re- 
bound from the oppressive sense of responsibility for 
his death, which he seemed to have incurred in telling 
Northwick that the best thing for him would be a 
railroad accident. Now that the man was not killed, 
Hilary could freely declare, ‘‘He made a great mis- 
take in not getting out of the world, as many of us 
believed he had ; I confess I had rather got to believe 
it myself. But he ought at least to have had the grace 
to remain dead to the poor creatures he had dis- 
honored till he could repay the people he had de- 
frauded.” 

“ Ah ! I don’t know about that,” said Sewell. 

“ No ? Why not ? ” 

“ Because it would be a kind of romantic deceit 
that he’d better not keep up.” 

“ He seems to have kept it up for the last four 
or five months,” said Hilary. 

“ That’s no reason he should continue to keep it 
up,” Sewell persisted. “ Perhaps he never knew of 
the rumor of his death.” 


276 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Ah, that isn’t imaginable. There isn’t a hole or 
corner left where the newspapers don’t penetrate, now- 
adays.” 

“ Not in Boston. But if he were in hiding in some 
little French village down the St. Lawrence — ” 

“ Isn’t that as romantic as the other notion, parson ? ” 
crowed old Corey. 

‘‘ No, I don’t think so,” said the minister. The 
cases are quite different. He might have a morbid 
shrinking from his own past, and the wish to hide 
from it as far as he could ; that would be natural ; but 
to leave his children to believe a rumor of his death 
in order to save their feelings, would be against nature ; 
it would be purely histrionic; a motive from the 
theatre ; that is, perfectly false.” 

Pretty hard on Hilary, who invented it,” Belling- 
ham suggested ; and they all laughed. 

I don’t know,” said Hilary. The man seems to 
be posing in Other ways. You would think from his 
letter that he was a sort of martyr to principle, and 
that he’d been driven off to Canada by the heartless 
creditors whom he’s going to devote his life to saving 
from loss, if he can’t do it in a few months or years. 
He may not be a conscious humbug, but he’s certainly 
a humbug. Take that pretence of his that he would 
come back and stand his trial if he believed it would 
not result in greater harm than good by depriving him 
of all hope of restitution ! ” 

“ Why, there’s a sort of crazy morality in that,” 
said Corey. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


277 


‘‘ Perhaps,” said Bellingham, the solution of the 
whole matter is that North wick is cracked.” 

‘‘I’ve no doubt he’s cracked to a certain extent,” 
said Sewell, “ as every wrong-doer is. You know the 
Swedenborgians believe that insanity is the last state 
of the wicked.” 

“ I suppose,” observed old Corey, thoughtfully, 
“you’d be very glad to have him keep out of your 
reach, Hilary ? ” 

“ What a question ! ” said Hilary. “ You’re as bad 
as my daughter. She asked me the same thing.” 

“ I wish I were no worse,” said the old man. 

“ You speak of his children,” said the Englishman. 
“ Hasn’t he a wife ? ” 

“ No. Two daughters. One an old maid, and the 
other a young girl, whom my daughter knew at 
school,” Hilary answered. 

“ I saw the young lady at your house once,” said 
Bellingham, in a certain way. 

“ Yes. She’s been here a good deal, first and 
last.” 

“Bather a high-stepping young person, I thought,’ 
said Bellingham. 

“ She is a proud girl,” Hilary admitted. “ Rather 
imperious, in fact.” 

“ Ah, what’s the pride of a young girl ? ” said Corey. 
“ Something that comes from her love and goes to it ; 
no separable quality ; nothing that’s for herself.” 

“Well, I’m not sure of that,” said Hilary. “In 
this case it seems to have served her own turn. It’s 


278 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


enabled her simply and honestly to deny the fact that 
her father ever did anything wrong.” 

^‘That’s rather fine,” Corey remarked, as if tast- 
ing it. 

And what will it enable her to do, now that he’s 
come out and confessed the frauds himself ? ” the 
Englishman asked. 

Hilary shrugged, for answer. He said to Belling- 
ham, “ Charles, I want you to try some of these crabs. 
I got them for you.” 

Why, this is touching, Hilary,” said Bellingham, 
getting his fat head round with difficulty to look at 
them in the dish the man was bringing to his side. 
“ But I don’t know that I should have refused them, 
even if they had been got for Corey.” 


IX. 


They did not discuss Nortliwick’s. letter at the 
dinner-parties in Hatboro’ because, socially speaking, 
they never dined there ; but the stores, the shops, the 
parlors, buzzed with comment on it ; it became a part 
of the forms of salutation, the color of the day’s joke. 
Gates, the provision man, had to own the error of his 
belief in Northwick’s death. He found his account in 
being the only man to own that he ever had such a 
belief ; he was a comfort to those who said they had 
always had their doubts of it ; the ladies of South 
Hatboro’, who declared to a woman that they had 
never believed it, respected the simple heart of a man 
who acknowledged that he had never questioned it. 
Such a man was not one to cheat his customers in 
quantity or quality; that stood to reason; his faith 
restored him to the esteem of many. 

Mr. Gerrish was very bitter about the double fraud 
which he said Northwick had practised on the com- 
munity, in having allowed the rumor of his death to 
gain currency. He denounced him to Mrs. Munger, 
making an early errand from South Hatboro’ to the 
village to collect public opinion, as a person who had 
put himself beyond the pale of public confidence, and 
whose professions of repentance for the past, and good 


280 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


intention for the future, he tore to shreds. “ It is said, 
and I have no question correctly, that hell is paved 
with good intentions — if you will excuse me, Mrs. 
Munger. When Mr. Northwick brings forth fruits 
meet for repentance — when he makes the first pay- 
ment to his creditors — I will believe that he is sorry 
for what* he has done, and not till then.’’ 

“ That is fl'ue,” said Mrs. Munger. I wonder 
what Mr. Putney will have to say to all this. Can 
he feel that his skirts are quite clean, acting that way, 
as the family counsel of the Northwicks, after all he 
used to say against him ? ” 

Mr. Gerrish expressed his indifference by putting 
up a roll of muslin on the shelf while he rejoined, “ I 
care very little for the opinions of Mr. Putney on any 
subject.” 

In some places Mrs. Munger encountered a belief, 
which she did not discourage, that the Northwick girls 
had known all along that their father was alive, and 
had been in communication with him, through Putney, 
most probably. In the light of this conjecture the 
lawyer’s character had a lurid effect, which it did not 
altogether lose when Jack Wilmington said, bluntly. 

What of it ? He’s their counsel. He’s not obliged 
to give the matter away. He’s obliged to keep it.” 

‘‘ But isn’t it very inconsistent,” Mrs. Munger 
urged, ‘‘ after all he used to say against Mr. North- 
wick?” 

“ I suppose it’s a professional, not a personal mat- 
ter,” said Wilmington. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


281 


‘‘And then, their putting on mourning ! Just think 
of it ! ” Mrs. Hunger appealed to Mrs. Wilmington, 
who was listening to her nephew’s savagery of tone 
and phrase with the lazy pleasure she seemed always 
to feel in it. 

“ Yes. Do you suppose they meant it for a blind ? ” 

“ Why, that’s what people think now, don’t they ? ” 

“ Oh, /don’t know. What do you think. Jack ? ” 

“ I think they’re a pack of fools ! ” he blurted out, 
like a man who avenges on the folly of others the 
hurt of his own conscience. He cast a look of brutal 
contempt at Mrs. Hunger, who said she thought so, 
too. 

“It is too bad the way people allow themselves to 
talk,” she went on. “ To be sure. Sue North wick has 
never done anything to make herself loved in Hat- 
boro’ — not among the ladies at least.” 

Mrs. Wilmington gave a spluttering laugh, and 
said, “ And I suppose it’s the ladies who allow them- 
selves to talk as they do. I can’t get the men in my 
family to say a word against her.” 

Jack scowled his blackest. “ It would be a pitiful 
scoundrel that did. Her misfortunes ought to make 
her sacred to every one that has the soul of a man.” 

“ Well, so it does. That is just what I was saying. 
The trouble is that they don’t make her sacred to 
every one that has the soul of a woman,” Mrs. Wil- 
mington teased. 

“I know it doesn’t,” Jack returned, in helpless 
scorn, as he left Mrs. Hunger alone to his aunt. 


282 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Do you suppose he still cares anything for her ? 
Mrs. Munger asked, with cosey confidentiality. 

‘‘Who knows?” Mrs. Wilmington rejoined, indo- 
lently. “ It would be very poetical, wouldn’t it, if he 
were to seize the opportunity to go back to her ? ” 

“ Beautiful ! ” sighed Mrs. Munger. “I do like a 
manly man ! ” 

She drove home through the village slowly, hoping 
for a chance of a further interchange of conjectures 
and impressions ; but she saw no one she had not 
already talked with till she met Dr. Morrell, driving 
out of the avenue from his house. She promptly set 
her phaeton across the road so that he could not get 
by, if he were rude enough to wish it. 

“ Doctor,” she called out, “ what do you think of 
this extraordinary letter of Mr. Northwick’s ? ” 

Dr. Morrell’s boyish eyes twinkled. “ You mean 
that letter in the Events f Do you think Northwick 
wrote it ? ” 

“ Why, don’t ^ou, doctor ? ” she questioned back, 
with a note of personal grievance in her voice. 

“ I’m not very well acquainted with his style. 
Then, you think he did write it? Of course, there 
are always various opinions. But I understood you 
thought he was burned in that accident last winter.” 

“ Now, doctor / ” said Mrs. Munger, with the pout 
which Putney said always made him want to kill her. 
“ You’re just trying to tease me ; I know you are. I’m 
going to drive right in and see Mrs. Morrell. She will 
tell me what you think.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


283 


“ I don’t believe you can see her,” said the doctor. 
“ She isn’t at all well.” 

Oh, I’m sorry for that. I don’t understand what 
excuse she has, though, with a physician for her hus- 
band. You must turn homoeopathy. Dr. Morrell, do 
you think it’s true that Jack Wilmington will offer 
himself to Sue Northwick, now that it’s come to the 
worst with her ? Wouldn’t it be romantic ? ” 

“Very,” said the doctor. He craned his head out 
of the buggy, as if to see whether he could safely 
drive into the ditch, and pass Mrs. Munger. He said 
politely, as he started, Don’t disturb yourself ! I can 
get by.” 

She sent a wail of reproach after him, and then 
continued toward South Hatboro’. As she passed' the 
lodge at the gate of the Northwick avenue, where the 
sisters now lived, she noted that the shades were 
closely drawn. They were always drawn on the side 
toward the street, but Mrs. Munger thought it inter- 
esting that she had never noticed it before, and in the 
dearth of material she made the most of it, both for 
her own emotion, and for the sensation of others when 
she reached South Hatboro’. 

Behind the drawn shades that Mrs. Munger noted, 
Adeline Northwick sat crying over the paper that 
Elbridge Newton had pushed under the door that 
morning. It was limp from the nervous clutch and 
tremor of her hands, and wet with her tears ; but she 
kept reading her father’s letter in it, and trying to 
puzzle out of it some hope or help. He must be 


284 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


crazy, he must be crazy,” she moaned, more to her- 
self than to Suzette, who sat rigidly and silently by. 
“ He couldn’t have been so cruel, if he had been in his 
right mind ; he couldn’t ! He was always so good to 
us, and so thoughtful ; he must have known that we 
had given him up for dead, long ago ; and he has let 
us go on grieving for him all this time. It’s just as if 
he had come back from death, and the first he did 
was to tell us that everything they said against him 
was true, and that everj^hing we said and believed 
was all wrong. How could he do it, how could he do 
it! We bore to think he was dead; yes, we bore 
that, and we didn’t complain ; but this is more than 
any one can ask us to bear. Oh, Suzette, what can 
we say, now ? What can we say, after he’s confessed 
himself that he took the money, and that he has got 
part of it yet ? But I know he didn’t ! I know he 
hasn’t I He’s crazy I Oh, poor, poor father ! Don’t 
you think he must be crazy ? And where is he ? Why 
don’t he write to us, and tell us what he wants us to 
do ? Does he think we would tell any one where he 
was? That shows he’s out of his mind. I always 
thought that if he could come back to life somehow, 
he’d prove that they had lied about him ; and now ! 
Oh, it isn’t as if it were merely the company that was 
concerned, or what people said ; but it’s as if our own 
father, that we trusted so much, had broken his word 
to us. That is what kills me.” 

The day passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away 
when she came to help them at dinner. They locked 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


285 


their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, as 
mourners do with death. Adeline’s monologue went 
on, with the brief responses which she extorted from 
Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if her heart had 
worn itself out in the futile repetition of its griefs. 

Then Suzette broke her silence with words that 
seemed to break from it of themselves in their abrupt 
irrelevance to what Adeline had last said. We 
must give it up ! ” 

“ Give what up ? ” Adeline groaned back. 

“ The house — and the farm — and this hovel. 
Everything ! It isn’t ours.” 

“ Not ours ? ” 

‘‘ No. That letter makes it theirs — the people’s 
whose money he took. We must send for Mr. Put- 
ney and tell him to give it to them. He will know 
how.” 

Adeline looked at her sister’s face in dismay. She 
gasped out, Why, but Mr. Putney says it’s ours, and 
nobody can touch it ! ” 

“ That was before. Now it is theirs ; and if we 
kept it from them we should be stealing it. How do 
we know that father had any right to give it to us 
when he did ? ” 

‘‘Suzette ! ” 

“ I keep thinking such things, and I had better say 
them unless I want to go out of my senses. Once I 
would have died before I gave it up, because he left 
it to us, and now it seems as if I couldn’t live till I 
gave it up, because he left it to us. No, I can never 


286 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


forgive him, if he is my father. I can never speak to 
him again, or see him ; never ! He is dead to me, 
now / ” 

The words seemed to appeal to the contrary-mind- 
edness that lurks in such natures as Adeline’s. “ Why, 
I don’t see what there is so wrong about father’s let- 
ter,” she began. “It just shows what I always said: 
that his mind was affected by his business troubles, 
and that he wandered away because he couldn’t get 
them straight. And now it’s preyed so upon him that 
he’s beginning to believe the things they say are true, 
and to blame himself. That’s the way I look at it.” 

“ Adeline ! ” Suzette commanded, with a kind of 
shriek, “ Be still ! You know you don’t believe that ! ” 
Adeline hesitated be.tween her awe of her sister, and 
her wish to persist in a theory which, now that she had 
formulated it for Suzette’s confusion, she found effec- 
tive for her own comfort. She ventured at last, “ It 
is what I said, the first thing, and I shall always say 
it, Suzette ; and I have a right.” 

“ Say what you please. I shall say nothing. But 
this property doesn’t belong to us till father comes 
back to prove it.” 

“ Comes back ! ” Adeline gasped. “ Why, they’ll 
send him to State’s prison ! ” 

“ They won’t send him to State’s prison if he’s 
innocent, and if he isn’t — ” 

“ Suzette ! Don’t you dare ! ” 

“ But that has nothing to do with it. We must 
give up what doesn’t belong to us. Will you go for 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


287 


Mr. Putney, or shall I go ? I’ni' not afraid to be 
seen, if you don’t like to go. I can hold up my 
head before the whole world, now I know what we 
ought to do, and we’re going to do it ; but if we 
kept this place after that letter, I couldn’t even look 
you in the face again.” She continued to Adeline’s 
silence, Why, we needn’t either of us go ! I can 
get Elbridge to go.” She made as if to leave the 
room. 

“ Wait ! I can’t let you — yet. I haven’t thought 
it out,” said Adeline. 

‘‘ Not thought it out ! ” Suzette went back and 
stood over her where she sat in her rocking-chair. 

‘‘ No ! ” said Adeline, shrinking from her fierce 
look, but with a gathering strength of resistance in 
her heart. Because you've been thinking of it, you 
expect me to do what you say in an instant. The 
place was mother’s, and when she died it came to me, 
and I hold it in trust for both of us ; that’s what Mr. 
Putney says. Even supposing that father did use 
their money — and I don’t believe he did — I don’t 
see why I should give up mother’s property to them.” 
She waited a moment before she said, ‘‘ And I won’t.” 

“ Is half of it mine ? ” asked Suzette. 

‘‘ I don’t know. Yes, I suppose so.” 

^‘I’m of age, and I shall give up my half. I’m 
going to send for Mr. Putney.” She went out of the 
room, and came back with her hat and gloves on, and 
her jacket over her arm. She had never been so 

beautiful, or so terrible. Listen to me, Adeline,” 
19 N 


288 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


she said, ‘‘ I’m going out to send Elbridge for Mr. 
Putney ; and when he comes I am not going to have 
any squabbling before him. You can do what you 
please with your half of the property, but I’m going 
to give up my half to the company. Now, if you 
don’t promise you’ll freely consent to what I want to 
do with my own, I will never come back to this house, 
or ever see you again, or speak to you. Do you 
promise ? ” 

Oh, well, I promise,” said Adeline, forlornly, with 
a weak dribble of tears. You can take your half of 
the place that mother owned, and give it to the men 
that are trying to destroy father’s character ! But I 
shall never say that I wanted you should do it.” 

So that you don’t say anything against it, I 
don’t care what else you say.” Suzette put on her 
jacket and stood buttoning it at her soft throat. I 
do it ; and I do it for mother’s sake and for father’s. 
I care as much for them as you do.” 

In the evening Putney came, and she told him she 
wished him to contrive whatever form was necessary 
to put her father’s creditors in possession of her 
half of the estate. My sister doesn’t feel as I do 
about it,” she ended. She thinks they have no right 
to it, and we ought to keep it. But she has agreed to 
let me give my half up.” 

Putney went to the door and threw out the quid of 
tobacco which he had been absently chewing upon 
while she spoke. “You know,” he explained, “that 
the creditors have no more claim on this estate, in law, 
than they have on my house and lot ? ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


289 


I don’t know. I don’t care for the law.” 

The case isn’t altered at all, you know, by the fact 
that your father is still living, and your title isn’t 
affected by any of the admissions made in the letter 
he has published.” 

“ I understand that,” said the girl. 

Well,” said Putney, “ I merely wanted to make 
sure you had all the bearings of the case. The thing 
can be done, of course. There’s nothing to prevent 
any one giving any one else a piece of property.” 

He remained silent for a moment, as if doubtful 
whether to say more, and Adeline asked, ‘‘ And do 
you believe that if we were to give up the property, 
they’d let father come back ? ” 

Putney could not control a smile at her simplicity. 
‘‘ The creditors have got nothing to do with that, Miss 
Northwick. Your father has been indicted, and he’s 
in contempt of court as long as he stays away. There 
can’t be any question of mercy till he comes back for 
trial.” 

“But if he came back,” she persisted, “our giv- 
ing up the property would make them easier with 
him?” 

“ A corporation has no bowels of compassion, Miss 
Northwick. I shouldn’t like to trust one. The com- 
pany has no legal claim on the estate. Unless you 
think it has a moral claim, you’d better hold on to 
your property.” 

“ And do you think it has a moral claim ? ” 

Putney drew a long breath. “ Well, that’s a nice 


290 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


question.” He stroked his trousers down over his 
little thin leg, as he sat. “ I have some peculiar no- 
tions about corporations. I don’t think a manufac- 
turing company is a benevolent institution, exactly. 
It isn’t even a sanitarium. It didn’t come for its 
health ; it came to make money, and it makes it by a 
profit on the people who do its work and the people 
who buy its wares. Practically, it’s just like every- 
thing else that earns its bread by the sweat of its 
capital — neither better nor worse.” Launched in 
this direction. Putney recalled himself with an effort 
from the prospect of an irrelevant excursion in the 
fields of speculative economy. But as I understand, 
the question is not so much whether the Ponkwasset 
Mills have a moral claim, as whether you have a moral 
obligation. And there I can’t advise. You would 
have to go to a clergyman. I can only say that if the 
property were mine I should hold on to it, and let the 
company be damned, or whatever could happen to a 
body that hadn’t a soul for that purpose.” 

Putney thrust his hand into his pocket for his 
tobacco ; and then recollected himself, and put it 
back. 

There, Suzette ! ” said Adeline. 

Suzette had listened in a restive silence, while Put- 
ney was talking with her sister. She said in answer 
to him : I don’t want advice about that. I wished 
to know whether I could give up my part of the es- 
tate to the company, and if you would do it for me at 
once.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


291 


‘‘ Oh, certainly,” said Putney. ‘‘ I will go down to 
Boston to-morrow morning and see their attorney.” 

“ Their attorney ? I thought you would have to go 
to Mr. Hilary.” 

“ He would send me to their lawyer, I suppose. 
But I can go to him first, if you wish.” 

“ Yes, I do wish it,” said the girl. “ I don’t under- 
stand about the company, and I don’t care for it. I 
want to offer the property to Mr. Hilary. Don’t say 
anything but just that I wished to give it up, and my 
sister consented. Don’t say a single word more, no 
matter what he asks you. Will you ? ” 

“ I will do exactly what you say,” answered Putney. 
“ But you understand, I suppose, don’t you, that in 
order to make the division, the whole place must be 
sold ? ” 

Suzette looked at him in surprise. Adeline wailed 
out, “ The whole place sold ? ” 

“ Yes ; how else could you arrive at the exact 
value ? ” 

“ I will keep the house and the grounds, and Su- 
zette may have the farm.” 

Putney shook his head. I don’t believe it could 
be done. Perhaps — ” 

“ Well, then,” said Adeline, I will never let the 
place be sold in the world. I — ” She caught Su- 
zette’s eye and faltered, and then went on piteously, 
“ I didn’t know what we should have to do when I 
promised. But 1*11 keep my promise; yes, I will. 
We needn’t sign the papers to-night, need we, Mr. 
Putney? It’ll do in the morning?” 


292 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Oh, yes ; just as well,” said Putney. “ It’ll take 
a little time to draw up the writings.” 

‘‘ But you can send word to Mr. Hilary at once ? ” 
Suzette asked. 

“ Oh, yes ; if you wish.” 

“ I do.” 

‘‘ It won’t be necessary.” 

I wish it.” 

Since the affair must so soon be known to every- 
body, Putney felt justified in telling his wife when he 
went home. “ If that poor old girl freely consented, 
it must have been at the point of the hairpin. Of 
course, the young one is right to obey her conscience, 
but as a case of conscience, what do you think of it, 
Ellen ? And do you think one ought to make any 
one else obey one’s conscience ? ” 

“ That’s a hard question, Ralph. And I’m not sure 
that she’s right. Why should she give up her prop- 
erty, if it was hers so long ago before the frauds be- 
gan ? Suppose he were not their father, and the case 
stood just as it does ? ” 

Ah, there’s something very strange about the 
duty of blood.” 

Blood ? I think Suzette Northwick’s case of con- 
science is a case of pride,” said Mrs. Putney. ‘‘ I don’t 
believe she cares anything about the right and wrong 
of it. She just wishes to stand well before the world. 
She would do anything for that. She’s as hard! ” 

“ That’s what the world will say, I’ve no doubt,” 
Putney admitted. 


X. 


The next morning Adeline came early to her sis- 
ter’s bed, and woke her. ‘‘ I haven’t slept all night 
— I don’t see how you could — and I want you 
shouldn’t let Mr. Putney send that letter to Mr. Hil- 
ary, just yet. I want to think it over, first.” 

‘‘ You want to break your promise ? ” asked Suzette, 
wide awake at the first word. 

Adeline began to cry. I want to think. It seems 
such a dreadful thing to sell tfie place. And why need 
you hurry to send off a letter to Mr. Hilary about it? 
IVon’t it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the 
writings ready ? I think it will look very silly to send 
word beforehand. I could see that Mr. Putney didn’t 
think it was business-like.” 

^^You want to break your promise?” Suzette re- 
peated. 

“ Ab, I don’t want to break my promise. But I do 
want to do what’s right; and I want to do Vvhat I 
think is right. I’m almost sick. I want Elbridge 
should stop for the doctor on his way to Mr. Put- 
ney’s.” She broke into a convulsive sobbing. “ Oh, 
Suzette! Do give me a little more time ! Won’t you ? 
And as soon as I can see it as you do — ” 

They heard the rattling of a key in the back door 


294 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


of the cottage, and they knew it was Elbridge coming 
to make the fire in the kitchen stove, as he always did 
against the time his wife should come to get breakfast. 
Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Ade- 
line’s face down on her neck, so as to smother the 
sound of her sobs. ‘‘ Hush ! Don’t let him hear ! And 
I wouldn’t let any one know for the world that we 
didn’t agree ! You can think it over all day, if you 
want ; and I’ll stop Mr. Putney from writing till you 
think as /do. But be still, now ! ” 

Yes, yes ! I will,” Adeline whispered back. “ And 
I won’t quarrel with you. Sue ! I know we shall think 
alike in the end. Only, don’t hurry me! And let 
Elbridge get the doctor to come. I’m afraid I’m 
going to be down sick. ’ 

She crept sighing back to bed, and after a little 
while, Suzette came, dressed, to look after her. I 
think I’m going to get a little sleep, now,” she said. 

But don’t forget to stop Mr. Putney.” 

Suzette went out intp the thin, sweet summer 
morning air, and walked up and down the avenue be- 
tween the lodge and the empty mansion. She had not 
siep.t, either ; it was from her first drowse that Ade- 
line had wakened her. But she was young, and the 
breath of the cool, southwest wind was a bath of rest 
to her fevered senses. She felt herself grow stronger 
in it, and she tried to think what she ought to do. If 
her purpose of the day before still seemed so wholly 
and perfectly just, it seemed very difficult; and she 
began to ask herself whether she had a right to com- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


295 


pel Adeline’s consent to it. She felt the perplexities 
of the world where good and evil are often so mixed 
that when the problem passes from thoughts to deeds, 
the judgment is darkened and the will palsied. Till 
now the wrong had always appeared absolutely apart 
from the right; for the first time she perceived that a 
great right might involve a lesser wrong ; and she was 
daunted. But she meant to fight out her fight wholly 
within herself before she spoke with Adeline again. 

That day Matt Hilary came over from his farm to 
see Wade, whom he found as before, in his study 
at the church, and disposed to talk over North- 
wick’s letter. “ It’s a miserable affair ; humiliating ; 
heart-sickening. That poor soul’s juggle with his 
conscience is a most pathetic spectacle. I can’t bring 
myself to condemn him very fiercely. But while 
others may make allowance for him, it’s ruinous for 
him to excuse himself. That’s truly perdition. Don’t 
you feel that ? ” Wade asked. 

‘‘ Yes, yes,” Matt assented, with a kind of absence. 

But there is something else I wanted to speak with 
you about ; and I suppose it’s this letter that’s made it 
seem rather urgent now. You know when I asked 
you once about Jack Wilmington — ” 

Wade shook his head. ‘‘ There isn’t the least hope 
in that direction. I’m sure there isn’t. If he had 
cared anything for the girl, he would have shown it 
long ago ! ” 

“ I quite agree with you,” said Matt, and that 

isn’t what I mean. But if it would have been right 
N* 


296 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


and well for him to come forward at such a time, why 
shouldn’t some other man, who does love her ? ” He 
hurried tremulously on : ‘‘ Wade, let me ask you one 
thing more ! You have seen her so much more than 
I ; and I didn’t know — Is it possible — Perhaps I 
ought to ask if you are at all — if you care for her ? ” 

‘‘ For Miss North wick ? Mdiat an idea ? Not the 
least in the world ! Why do you ask ? ” 

“ Because / do ! ” said Matt. I care everything 
for her. So much that when I thought of my love 
for her, I could not bear that it should be a wrong 
to any living soul or that it should be a shadow’s 
strength between her and any possible preference. 
And I came here with my mind made up that if you 
thought Jack Wilmington had still some right to a 
hearing from her, I would stand back. If there were 
any hopes for him from himself or from her, I should 
be a fo'ol not to stand back. And I thought — I 
thought that if you, old fellow — But now, it’s all 
right — all right — ” 

Matt wrung the hand which Wade yielded him 
with a dazed air, at first. A great many things 
went through Wade’s mind, which he silenced on 
their way to his lips. It would not do to impart to 
Matt the impressions of a cold and arrogant nature 
which the girl had sometimes given him, and which Matt 
could not have received in the times of trouble and 
sorrow when he had chiefly seen her. Matt’s confes- 
sion was a shock ; Wade was scarcely less dismayed 
by the complications which it suggested ; but he could 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY, 


297 


no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; 
he could no more tell Matt that his father would be 
embarrassed and compromised by his passion than he 
could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick 
was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predica- 
ment that confidants often find themselves in, but his 
final perception of his impossibilities enabled him to 
return the fervid pressure of Matt’s hand, and even 
to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the 
purpose when another wishes to do the talking. 

Of course,” said Matt, “ I’m ridiculous, I know 
that. I haven’t got anything to found my hopes on 
but the fact that there’s nothing in my way to the one 
insuperable obstacle : to the fact that she doesn’t and 
can’t really care a straw for me. But just now that 
seems a mere bagatelle.” He laughed with a nervous 
joy, and he kept talking, as he walked up and down 
Wade’s study. “ I don’t know that I have the hope 
of anything ; and I don’t see hoW I’m to find out 
whether I have or not, for the present. You know, 
Wade,” he went on, with a simple-hearted sweetness, 
which Wade found touching, “ I’m twenty-eight years 
old, and I don’t believe I’ve ever been in love before. 
Little fancies, of course ; summer flirtations ; every 
one has them ; but never anything serious, anything 
like this. And I could see, at home, that they would 
be glad to have had me married. I rather think my 
father believes that a good sensible wife would bring 
me back to faith in commercial civilization.” He 
laughed out his relish of the notion, but went on. 


298 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


gravely : “ Poor father ! This whole business has 
been a terrible trial to him.” 

Wade wondered at his ability to separate the 
thought of Suzette from the thought of her father; 
he inferred from his ability to do so that he must 
have been thinking of her a great deal, but he asked, 
“ Isn’t it all rather sudden. Matt ? ” Wade put on a 
sympathetic, yet diplomatic, smile for the purpose of 
this question. 

“Not for me ! ” said Matt. He added, not very 
consequently, “I suppose it must have happened to 
me the first moment I saw her here that day Louise 
and I came up about the accident. I couldn’t truly 
say that she had ever been out of my mind a moment 
since. No, there’s nothing sudden about it, though I 
don’t suppose these things usually take a great deal of 
time,” Matt ended, philosophically. 

Wade left the dangerous ground he found himself 
on. He asked, “ And your family, do they know of 
your — feeling ? ” 

“ Not in the least ! ” Matt answered, radiantly. “ It 
will come on them like a thunder-clap ! If it ever 
comes on them at all,” he added, despondently. 

Wade had his own belief that there was no cause 
for despondency in the aspect of the affair that Matt 
was looking at. But he could not offer to share his 
security with Matt, who continued to look serious, and 
said, presently, “ I suppose my father might think it 
complicated his relation to the Northwicks’ trouble, 
and I have ' thought that, too. It makes it very difli- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


299 


cult. My father is to be considered. You know, 
Wade, I think there are very few men like my 
father?” 

‘‘ There are none. Matt ! ” said Wade. 

‘‘ I don’t mean he’s perfect ; and I think his ideas 
are wrong, most of them. But his conduct is as right 
as the conduct of any quick-tempered man ever was in 
the world. I know him, and I don’t believe a son 
ever loved his father more ; and so I want to consider 
him all 1 can.” 

“ Ah, I know that, my dear fellow ! ” 

‘‘ But the question is, how far cait I consider him ? 
There are times,” said Matt, and he reddened, and 
laughed consciously, “ when it seems as if I couldn’t 
consider him at all ; the times when I have some faint 
hope that she will listen to me, or won’t think me 
quite a brute to speak to her of such a thing at such a 
moment. Then there are other times when I think 
he ought to be considered to the extreme of giving her 
up altogether ; but those are the times when I know 
that I shall never have her to give up. Then it’s an 
easy sacrifice.” 

‘‘ I understand,” said Wade, responding with a smile 
to Matt’s self-satire. 

Matt went on, and as he talked he sometimes walked 
to Wade’s window and looked out, sometimes he 
stopped and confronted him across his desk. It’s 
cowardly, in a way, not to speak at once — to leave 
her to suffer it out to the end alone ; but I think that’s 
what I owe to my father. No real harm can come to 


300 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


her from waitino:. I risk the unfair chance I miijht 
gain by speaking now when she sorely needs help; 
but if ever she came to think she had given herself 
through that need — No, it wouldn’t do ! My father 
can do more for her if he isn’t hampered by my feel- 
ing, and Louise can be her friend — What do you 
think, Wade? I’ve tried to puzzle it out, and this is 
the conclusion I’ve come to. Is it rather cold-blooded ? 
I know it isn’t at all like the lovemaking in the books. 
I suppose I ought to go and fling myself at her feet, in 
defiance of all the decencies and amenities and obliga- 
tions of life, but somehow I can’t bring myself to do 
it. I’ve thought it all conscientiously over, and I 
think I ought to wait.” 

I think so, too. Matt. I think your decision is a 
just man’s, and it’s a true lover’s, too. It does your 
heart as much honor as your head,” and Wade gave 
him his hand now, with no mental reservation. 

Do you really think so, Caryl ? That makes me 
very happy ! I was afraid it might look calculating 
and self-interested — ” 

You self-interested. Matt !” 

‘‘ Oh, I know ! But is it considering my duty too 
much, my love too little ? If I love her, hasn’t she 
the first claim upon me, before father and mother, 
brother and sister, before all the world ? ” 

If you are sure she loves you, yes.” 

Matt laughed. Ah, that’s true ; I hadn’t thought 
of that little condition ! Perhaps it changes the whole 
situation. Well, I must go, now. I’ve just run over 
from the farm to see you — ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


301 


I inferred that from your peasant garb,” said 
"Wade, with a smile at the rough farm suit Matt had 
on ! his face refined it and made it look mildly im- 
probable. “Besides,” said Wade, as if the notion he 
recurred to were immediately relevant to Matt’s dress, 
“unless you are perfectly sure of yourself beyond any 
chance of change, you owe it to her as well as your- 
self, to take time before speaking.” 

“I am perfectly sure, and 1 shall never change,” 
said Matt, with a shade of displeasure at the sugges- 
tion. “ If there were nothing but that I should not 
take a moment of time.” He relented and smiled 
again, in adding, “But I have decided now, and I 
shall wait. And I’m very much obliged to you, old 
fellow, for talking the matter over with me, and help- 
ing me to see it in the right light.” 

“ Oh, my dear Matt ! ” said Wade, in deprecation. 

“ Yes. And oh, by the way ! I’ve got hold of a 
young fellow that I think you could do something for, 
Wade. Do you happen to remember the article on 
the defalcation in the Boston Abstract ? 

“ Yes, I do remember that. Didn’t it treat the 
matter, if I recall it, very humanely — too humanely, 
perhaps ? ” 

“ Perhaps, from one point of view, too humanely. 
Well, it’s the writer of that article — a young fellow, 
not twenty-five, yet as completely at odds with life 
as any one I ever saw. He has a great deal of talent, 
and no health or money ; so he’s toiling feebly for a 
living oil a daily newspaper, instead of making litera- 


302 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


ture. He was a reporter up to the time he wrote 
that article, but the managing editor is a man who 
recognizes quality ; he’s fond of Maxwell — that’s the 
fellow’s name — and since then he’s given him a 
chance in the office, at social topics. But he hasn’t 
done very well ; the fact is, the boy’s too literary, 
and he’s out of health, and he needs rest and the 
comfort of appreciative friendship. I want you to 
meet him. I’ve got him up at my place out of the 
east winds. You’ll be interested in him as a type — 
the artistic type cynicised by the hard conditions of 
life — newspaper conditions, and then economic con- 
ditions.” 

Matt smiled with satisfaction in what he felt to be 
his very successful formulation of Maxwell. 

Wade said he should be very glad to meet him ; and 
if he could be of any use to him he should be even 
more glad. But his mind was still upon Matt’s love 
affair, and as they wrung each other’s hands, once 
more he said, I think you’ve decided so wisely. 
Matt ; and justly and unselfishly.” 

“ It’s involuntary unselfishness, if it’s unselfishness 
at all,” said Matt. He did not go ; Wade stood bare- 
headed with him at the outer door of his study. After 
awhile he said with embarrassment, Wade ! Do you 
think it would seem unfeeling — or out of taste, at all 
— if I went to see her at such a time ? ” 

“ Why, I can’t imagine your doing anything out of 
taste. Matt.” 

“ Don’t be so smooth, Caryl ! You know what I 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


303 


mean. Louise sent some messages by me to her. 
Will you take them, or — ” 

“ I certainly see no reason why you shouldn’t de- 
liver Miss Hilary’s messages yourself.” 

Well, I do,” said Matt. But you needn’t be 
afraid.” 


20 


XL 


Matt took the lower road that wound away from 
Wade’s church toward the North wick place ; but as he 
went, he kept thinking that he must not really try to 
see Suzette. It would be monstrous, at such a time ; 
out of all propriety, of all decency ; it would be tak- 
ing advantage of her helplessness to intrude upon her 
the offer of help and of kindness which every instinct 
of her nature must revolt from. There was only one 
thing that could justify his coming, and that was im- 
possible. Unless he came to tell her that he loved 
her, and to ask her to let him take her burden upon 
him, to share her shame and her sorrow for his love’s 
sake, he had no right to see her. At moments it 
seemed as if that were right and he could do it, no 
matter how impossible, and then he almost ran for- 
ward ; but only to check himself, to stop short, and 
doubt whether not to turn back altogether. By such 
faltering progresses, he found himself in the North- 
wick avenue at last, and keeping doggedly on from 
the mansion, which the farm road had brought him to, 
until he reached the cottage at the avenue gate. On 
the threshold drooped a figure that the sight of set 
his heart beating with a stifling pulse in his throat, and 
he floundered on till he made out that this languid 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


305 


figure was Adeline. He could have laughed at the 
irouy, the mockery of the anticlimax, if it had not 
been for the face that the old maid turned upon him at 
the approach of his footfalls, and the pleasure that 
lighted up its pathos when she recognized him. 

‘‘ Oh^ Mr. Hilary ! ” she said ; and then she could 
not speak, for the twitching of her lips and the trem- 
bling of her chin. 

He took her hand in silence, and it seemed natural 
for him to do that reverent and tender thing which is 
no longer a part of our custom ; he bent over it and 
kissed the chill, bony knuckles. 

She drew her hand away to find her handkerchief 
and wipe her tears. I suppose you’ve come to see 
Suzette ; but she’s gone up to the village to talk with 
Mr. Putney ; he’s our lawyer.” 

“Yes,” said Matt. 

“P presume I don’t need to talk to you about that 
— letter. I think, — and I believe Suzette will think 
so too in the end, — that his mind is affected, and he 
just accuses himself of all these things because they’ve 
been burnt into it so. How are your father and 
mother ? And your sister ? ” 

She broke off with these questions, he could see, to 
stay herself in what she wished to say. “ They are 
all well. Father is still in Boston ; but mother and 
Louise are at the farm with me. They sent their 
love, and they are anxious to know if there is any- 
thing— ” 

“Thank you. Will you sit down here? It’s so 


306 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


close indoors.” She made room for him on the 
threshold, but he took the step below. 

“ 1 hope Miss Suzette is well ? ” 

Why, thank you, not very well. There isn’t any- 
thing really the matter; but we didn’t either of us 
sleep very well last night ; we were excited. I don’t 
know as I ought to tell you,” she began. “ I 
don’t suppose it’s a thing you would know about, 
any way ; but I’ve got to talk to somebody — ” 

‘‘ Miss North wick,” said Matt, “ if there is anything 
in the world that I can do for you, or that you even 
hope I can do, I heg you to let me hear it. I should 
be glad beyond all words to help you.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know as anything can be done,” she 
began, after the fresh gush of tears which were her 
thanks, “ but Suzette and I have been talking it over 
a good deal, and we thought we would like to see your 
father about it. You see, Suzette can’t feel right 
about our keeping the place here, if father’s really 
done what he says he’s done. We don’t believe he 
has ; but if he has, he has got to be found somewhere, 
and made to give up the money he says he has got. 
Suzette thinks we ought to give up the money we have 
got in the bank — fifteen hundred or two thousand 
dollars — and she wanted I should let her give up her 
half of the place, here ; and at first I did say she might. 
But come to find out from Mr. Putney, the whole place 
would have to be sold before it could be divided, and 
I couldn’t seem to let it. That was what we — dis- 
puted about. Yes ! We had a dispute ; but it’s all right 


THE QUALITY* OF MERCY. 


307 


now, or it will be, when we get the company to say 
they will stop the lawsuit against father, if he will 
give up the money he’s got, and we will give up the 
place. Mr. Putney seemed to think the company 
couldn’t stop it ; but I don’t see why a rich corpora- 
tion like that couldn’t do almost anything it wanted to 
with its money.” 

Her innocent corruption did not shock Matt, nor 
her scheme for defeating justice ; but he smiled for- 
lornly at the hopelessness of it. ‘‘ I’m afraid Mr. 
Putney is right.” He was silent, and then at the 
despair that came into her face, he hurried on to say, 
“ But I will see my father. Miss Northwick ; I will 
go down to see him at once ; and if anything can be 
honorably and fairly done to save your father, I am 
sure he will try to do it for your sake. But don’t 
expect anything,” he said, getting to his feet and put- 
ting out his hand to her. 

“ No, no ; I won’t,” she said, with gratitude that 
wrung his heart. “ And — won’t you wait and see 
Suzette ? ” 

Matt reddened. No ; I think not now. But, 
perhaps, I will come back ; and — and — I will come 
soon again. Good-by ! ” 

“ Mr. Hilary ! ” she called after him. He ran back 
to her. If — if your father don’t think anything can 
be done, I don’t want he should say anything about it.” 

“ Oh, no ; certainly not.” 

“ And, Mr. Hilary ! Don’t you let Suzette know I 
spoke to you. I'll tell her.” 


308 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Why, of course.” 

On his way to Boston the affair seemed to grow less 
and less impossible to Matt ; but he really knew noth- 
ing of the legal complications ; and when he proposed 
it to his father, old Hilary shook his head. “ I don't 
believe it could be done. The man’s regularly in- 
dicted, and he’s in contempt of court as long as he 
doesn’t present himself for trial. That’s the way I 
understand it. But I’ll see our counsel. Whose 
scheme is this ? ” 

don’t know. Miss Northwick told me of it; 
but I fancied Miss Suzette — ” 

Yes,” said Hilary. It must have cost her al- 
most her life to give up her faith in that pitiful ras- 
cal.” 

“ But after she had done that, it would cost her 
nothing to give up the property, and as I understood 
Miss Northwick, that was her sister's first impulse. 
She wished to give up her half of the estate uncondi- 
tionally ; but Miss Northwick wouldn’t consent, and 
they compromised on the conditions she told me of.” 

“Well,” said Hilary, “I think Miss Northwick 
showed the most sense. But of course, Sue’s a noble 
girl. She almost transfigures that old scoundrel of a 
father of hers. That fellow — Jack Wilmington — 
ought to come forward now and show himself a man, 
if he is one. Any man might be proud of such a 
girl’s love — and they say she was in love with him. 
But he seems to have preferred to dangle after his 
uncle’s wife. He isn’t good enough for her, and prob- 
ably he always knew it.” 


thp: quality of mercy. 


309 


Matt profited by the musing fit that came upon his 
father, to go and look at the picture over the mantel. 
It was not a new picture ; but he did not feel that he 
was using his father quite frankly ; and he kept look- 
ing at it for that reason. 

‘‘If those poor creatures gave up their property, 
what would they do? They’ve absolutely nothing 
else in the world! ” 

“ I fancy,” said Matt, ‘‘ that isn’t a consideration 
that would weigh with Suzette North wick.” 

“ No. If there’s anything in heredity, the father of 
such a girl must have some good in him. Of course, 
they wouldn’t be allowed to suffer.” 

“ Do you mean that the company would regard the 
fact that it had no legal claim on the property, and 
would recognize it in their behalf ? ” 

‘‘ The company ! ” Hilary roared. ‘‘ The company 
has no right to that property, moral or legal. But we 
should act as if we had. If it were unconditionally 
offered to us, we ought to acknowledge it as an act of 
charity to us, and not of restitution. But every man 
Jack of us would hold out for a right to it that didn’t 
exist, and we should take it as part of our due ; and I 
should be such a coward that I couldn’t tell the Board 
what I thought of our pusillanimity.” 

“ It seems rather hard for men to act magnanimously 
in a corporate capacity, or even humanely,” said Matt. 
“ But I don’t know but there would be an obscure 
and negative justice in such action. It would be right 
for the company to accept the property, if it was right 


310 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


for Northwick’s daughter to offer it, aud I think it is 
most unquestionably right for her to do that.” 

“ Do you, Matt ? Well, well,” said Hilary, willing 
to be comforted, “ perhaps you’re right. You must 
send Louise and your mother over to see her.” 

“Well, perhaps not just now. She’s proud and 
sensitive, and perhaps it might seem intrusive, at this 
juncture ? ” 

“ Intrusive ? Nonsense ! She’ll be glad to see them. 
Send them right over ! ” 

Matt knew this was his father’s way of yielding the 
point, and he went away with his promise to say noth- 
ing of the matter they had talked of till he heard from 
Putney. After that would be time enough to ascer- 
tain the whereabouts of North wick, which no one 
knew yet, not even his own children. 

What his father had said in praise of Suzette gave 
his love for her unconscious approval ; but at the same 
time it created a sort of comedy situation, and Matt 
was as far from the comic as he hoped he was from 
the romantic, in his mood. When he thought of going 
direct to her, he hated to be going, like the hero of a 
novel, to offer himself to the heroine at the moment 
her fortunes were darkest ; but he knew that he was 
only like that outwardly, and inwardly was simply and 
humbly her lover, who wished in any way or any 
measure he might, to be her friend and helper. He 
thought he might put his offer in some such form as 
would leave her free to avail herself a little if not 
much of his longing to comfort aud support her in her 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


311 


trial. But at last he saw that he could do nothing for 
the present, and that it would be cruel and useless to 
give her more than the tried help of a faithful friend, 
lie did not go back to Hatboro’, as he longed to do. 
lie went back to his farm, and possessed his soul in 

such patience as he could. 

0 


XII. 


SuzETTE came back from Putney’s office with such 
a disheartened look that Adeline had not the courage 
to tell her of Matt’s visit and the errand he had under- 
taken for her. The lawyer had said no more than 
that he did not believe anything could be done. He 
was glad they had decided not to transfer their prop- 
erty to the company, without first trying to make 
interest for their father with it ; that was their right, 
and their duty ; and he would try what could be done ; 
but he warned Suzette that he should probably fail. 

' And then what did he think we ought to do ? ” 
Adeline asked. 

“ He didn’t say,” Suzette answered. 

I presume,” Adeline went on, after a little pause^ 
“ that you would like to give up the property, any- 
way. Well, you can do it, Suzette.” The joy she 
might have expected did not show itself in her sister’s 
face, and she added, I’ve thought it all over, and I 
see it as you do, now. Only,” she quavered, “ I do 
want to do all I can for poor father, first.” 

“ Yes,” said Suzette, spiritlessly, Mr. Putney said 
we ought.” 

“ Sue,” said Adeline, after another little pause, “ I 
don’t know what you’ll think of me, for what I’ve 
done. Mr. Hilary has been here — ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


313 


“Mr. Hilary! ” 

“ Yes. He came over from his farm — ’’ 

“ Oh I I thought you meant his father.” The color 
began to mount into the girl’s cheeks. 

“ Louise and Mrs. Hilary sent their love, and they 
all want to do anything they can ; and — and I told 
Mr. Hilary what we were going to try ; and — he 
said he would speak to his father about it ; and — Oh, 
Suzette, I’m afraid I’ve done more than I ought ! ” 

Suzette was silent, and then, “No,” she said, “I 
can’t see what harm there could be in it.” 

“He said,” Adeline pursued with joyful relief, 
“ he wouldn’t let his father speak to the rest about it, 
till we were ready ; and I know he’ll do all he can for 
us. Don’t you ? ” 

Sue answered, “ I don’t see what harm it can do for 
him to speak to his father. I hope, Adeline,” she 
added, with the severity Adeline had dreaded, “ you 
didn’t ask it as a favor from him ? 

“No, no! I didn’t indeed. Sue! It came natur- 
ally. He offered to do it.” 

“ Well,” said Suzette, with a sort of relaxation, and 
she fell back in the chair where she had been sitting, 

“ I don’t see,” said Adeline, with an anxious look 
at the girl’s worn face, “ but what we’d both better 
have the doctor.” 

“ Ah, the doctor ! ” cried Suzette. “ What can the 
doctor do for troubles like ours ? ” She put up her 
hands to her face, and bowed herself on them, and 
sobbed, with the first tears she had shed since the 
worst had come upon them. 


314 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


The company’s counsel submitted Putney’s over- 
tures, as he expected, to the State’s attorney, in the 
hypothetical form, and the State’s attorney, as Putney 
expected, dealt with the actuality. He said that when 
Northwick’s friends communicated with him and ascer- 
tained his readiness to surrender the money he had 
with him, and to make restitution in every possible 
way, it would be time to talk of a nolle prosequi. 
In the meantime, by the fact of absconding he was 
in contempt of court. He must return and submit 
himself for trial, and take the chance of a merciful 
sentence. 

There could be no other answer, he said, and he 
could give none for Putney to carry back to the de- 
faulter’s daughters. 

Suzette received it in silence, as if she had nerved 
herself up to bear it so. Adeline had faltered be- 
tween Ler hopes and fears, but she had apparently 
decided how she should receive the worst, if the worst 
came. 

‘‘ Well, then,” she said, we must give up the place. 
You can get the papers ready, Mr. Putney.” 

“ I will do whatever you say, Miss North wick.” . 

‘‘Yes, and I don’t want you to think that I don’t 
want to do it. It’s my doing now ; and if my sister 
was all against it, I should wish to do it all the 
same.” 

Matt Hilary learned from his father the result of 
the conference with the State’s attorney, and he came 
up to Hatboro’ the next day, to see Putney on his 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


315 


father’s behalf, and to express the wish of his family 
that Mr. Putney would let them do anything he could 
think of for his clients. He got his message out bung- 
lingly, with embarrassed circumlocution and repetition ; 
but this was what it came to in the end. 

Putney listened with sarcastic patience, shifting the 
tobacco in his mouth from one thin cheek to the other, 
and letting his fierce blue eyes burn on Matt’s kindly 
face. 

“ Well, sir,” he said, what do you think can be 
done for two women, brought up as ladies, who choose 
to beggar themselves ? ” 

“ Is it so bad as that ? ” Matt asked. 

‘‘ Why, you can judge for yourself. My present 
instructions are to make their whole estate over to the 
Ponkwasset Mills Company — ” 

But I thought — I thought they might have some- 
thing besides — something — ” 

There was a little money in the bank that North- 
wick placed there to their credit when he went away ; 
but I’ve had their instructions to pay that over to 
your company, too. I suppose they will accept 
it?” 

“ It isn’t my company,” said Matt. “ I’ve nothing 
whatever to do with it — or any company. But I’ve 
no doubt they’ll accept it.” 

‘‘They can’t do otherwise,” said the lawyer, with a 
humorous sense of the predicament twinkling in his 
eyes. “ And that will leave my clients just nothing in 
the world until Mr. Northwick comes home with that 


316 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


^ fortune he proposes to make. In the meantime they 
have their chance of starving to death, or living on 
charity. And I don’t believe,” said Putney, breaking 
down with a laugh, “ they’ve the slightest notion of 
doing either.” 

Matt stood appalled at the prospect which the brute 
terms brought before him. He realized that after all 
there is no misery like that of want, and that yonder 
poor girl had chosen something harder to bear than 
her father’s shame. 

‘‘Of course,” he said, “they mustn’t be allowed to 
suffer. We shall count upon you to see that nothing 
of that kind happens. You can contrive somehow not 
to let them know that they are destitute.” 

“ Why,” said Putney, putting his leg over t^e back 
of a chair into its seat, for his greater ease in conver- 
sation, “ I could, if I were a lawyer in a novel. But 
what do you think I can do with two women like 
these, who follow me up every inch of the way, and 
want to know just what I mean by every step I take ? 
You’re acquainted with Miss Suzette, 1 suppose ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Matt, consciously. 

“Well, do you suppose that such a girl as that, 
when she had made up her mind to starve, wouldn’t 
know what you were up to if you pretended to have 
found a lot of money belonging to her under the cup- 
board ? ” 

“The company must do something,’ said Matt, des- 
perately. “ They have no claim on the property, none 
whatever ! ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


317 


“ Now you’re shouting.” Putney put a comfortable 
mass of tobacco in his mouth, and began to work his 
jaws vigorously upon it. 

‘- They mustn’t take it — they won’t take it ! ” cried 
Matt. 

Putney laughed scornfully. 


XIII. 


Matt made his way home to his farm, by a tire- 
some series of circuitous railroad connections across 
country. He told his mother of the new shape the 
trouble of the Northwicks had taken, and asked her 
if she could not go to see them, and find out some way 
to help them. 

Louise wished to go instantly to see them. She 
cried out over the noble action that Suzette wished to 
do ; she knew it was all Suzette. 

“ Yes, it is noble,” said Mrs. Hilary. “ But I 
almost wish she wouldn’t do it.” 

“ Why, mamma ? ” 

“It complicates matters. They could have gone on 
living there very well as they were ; and the company 
doesn’t need it ; but now where will they go ? What 
will become of them ? ” 

Louise had not thought of that, and she found it 
shocking. 

“ I suppose,” Matt said, “ that the company would 
let them stay where they are, for the present, and that 
they won’t be actually houseless. But they propose 
now to give up the money that their father left for 
their support till he could carry out the crazy schemes 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


319 


for retrieving himself that he speaks of in his letter ; 
.and then they will have nothing to live on.” 

“ I knew Suzette would do that ! ” said Louise. 
“ Before that letter came out she always said that her 
father never did what the papers said. But that cut 
the ground from under her feet, and such a girl could 
have no peace till she had given up everything — 
everything ! 

“ Something must be done,” said Mrs. Hilary. 
“ Have they — has Suzette — any plans ? ” 

“ None, but that of giving up the little money they 
have left in the bank,” said Matt, forlornly. 

“'Well,” Mrs. Hilary commented with a sort of 
magisterial authority, “ they’ve all managed as badly 
as they could.” 

“Well, mother, they hadn’t a very hopeful case, to 
begin with,” said Matt, and Louise smiled. 

“ I suppose your poor father is worried almost to 
death about it,” Mrs. Hdary pursued. 

“ He was annoyed, but I couldn’t see that he had 
lost his appetite. I don't think that even his worri- 
ment is the first thing to be considered, though.” 

“ No ; of course not. Matt. I was merely trying to 
think. I don’t know just what we can offer to do ; 
but we must find out. Yes, we must go and see them. 
They don't seem to have any one else. It is very 
strange that they should have no relations they can go 
to ! ” Mrs. Hilary meditated upon a hardship which 
she seemed to find personal. “ Well, we must try 
what we can do,” she said relentingly, after a moment’s 
pause. 


21 


0 * 


320 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


They talked the question of what she could do 
futilely over, and at the end Mrs. Hilary said, “ I 
will go there in the morning. And I think I shall go 
from there to Boston, and try to get your father off to 
the shore.’’ 

“ Oh ! ” said Louise. 

“Yes; I don’t like his being in town so late.” 

“ Poor papa ! Did he look very much wasted away. 
Matt ? Why don’t you get him to come up here ? ” 

“ He’s been asked,” said Matt. 

“Yes, I know he hates the country,” Louise as- 
sented. She rose and went to the glass door standing 
open on the piazza, where a syringa bush was filling 
the dull, warm air with its breath. “ We must all try 
to think what we can do for Suzette.” 

Her mother looked at the doorway after she had 
vanished through it; and listened a moment to her 
voice in talk with some one outside. The two voices 
retreated together, and Louise’s laugh made itself 
heard farther off. “ She is a light nature,” sighed 
Mrs. Hilary. 

“Yes,” Matt admitted, thinking he would rather 
like to be of a light nature himself at that moment. 
“ But I don’t know that there is anything wrong in it. 
It would do no good if she took the matter heavily.” 

“ Oh, I don’t mean the North wicks entirely,” said 
Mrs. Hilary. “ But she is so in regard to everything. 
I know she is a good child, but I’m afraid she doesn’t 
feel things deeply. Matt, I don’t believe I like this 
protege of yours.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


321 


“ Maxwell ? ” 

“ Yes. He’s too intense.” 

“ Aren’t you a little difficult, mother ? ” Matt asked. 
“ You don’t like Louise’s lightness, and you don’t like 
Maxwell’s intensity. I think he’ll get over that. He’s 
sick, poor fellow ; he won’t be so intense when he gets 
better.” 

“ Oh, yes ; very likely.” Mrs. Hilary paused, and 
then she added, abruptly, ‘‘ I hope Louise’s sympathies 
will be concentrated on Sue Northwick for a while, 
now.” 

“I thought they were that, already,” said Matt. 
‘‘ I’m sure Louise has shown herself anxious to be her 
friend ever since her troubles began. I hadn’t sup- 
posed she was so attached to her — so constant — ” 

“ She’s romantic ; but she’s worldly ; she likes the 
world and its ways. There never was a girl who 
liked better the pleasure, the interest of the moment. 
I don’t say she’s fickle ; but one thing drives another 
out of her mind. She likes to live in a dream ; she 
likes to make-believe. Just now she’s all taken up 
with an idyllic notion of country life, because she’s 
here in June, with that sick young reporter to pat- 
ronize. But she’s the creature of her surroundings, 
and as soon as she gets away she’ll be a different 
person altogether. She’s a strange contradiction ! ” 
Mrs. Hilary sighed. “ If she would only be entirely 
worldly, it wouldn’t be so difficult ; but when her mix- 
ture of unworldliness comes in, it’s quite distracting.” 
She waited a moment as if to let Matt ask her what 


322 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


she meant ; but he did not, and she went on : “ She’s 
certainly not a simple character — like Sue North- 
wick, for instance.” 

Matt now roused himselL Is she a simple charac- 
ter ? ” he asked, with a show of indifference. 

“ Perfectly,” said his mother. “ She always acts 
from pride. That explains everything she does.” 

“ I know she is proud,” Matt admitted, finding a 
certain comfort in openly recognizing traits in Sue 
Northwick that he had never deceived himself about. 
He had a feeling, too, that he was behaving with 
something like the candor due his mother, in saying, 
“ I could imagine her being imperious, even arrogant 
at times ; and certainly she is a wilful person. But I 
don’t see,” he added, ‘‘ why we shouldn’t credit her 
with something better than pride in what she proposes 
to do now.” 

She has behaved very well,” said Mrs. Hilary, 
“ and much better than could have been expected of 
her father’s daughter.” 

Matt felt himself getting angry at this scanty jus- 
tice, but he tried to answer calmly, “ Surely, mother, 
there must be a point where the blame of the innocent 
ends ! I should be very sorry if you went to Miss 
Northwick with the idea that we were conferring a 
favor in any way. It seems to me that she is indirectly 
putting us under an obligation which we shall find it 
difficult to discharge with delicacy.” 

‘^Aren’t you rather fantastic, Matt ? ” 

‘‘I’m merely trying to be just. The company has 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


323 


no right to the property which she is going to give 
up.’^ 

“We are not the company.’^ 

“ Father is the president.’’ 

“ Well, and he got Mr. Northwick a chance to save 
himself, and he abused it, and ran away. And if she 
is not responsible for her father, why should you feel 
so for yours ? But I think you may trust me. Matt, 
to do what is right and proper — even what is deli- 
cate — with Miss Northwick.” 

“ Oh, yes! I didn’t mean that.” 

“ You said something like it, my dear.” 

“Then I beg your pardon, mother. I certainly 
wasn’t thinking of her alone. But she is proud, and 
I hoped you would let her feel that we realize all that 
she is doing.” 

“ I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Hilary, with a final sigh, 
“ that if I were quite frank with her, I should tell her 
she was a silly, headstrong girl, and I wished she 
wouldn't do it.” 


XTV. 


The morning which followed was that of a warm, 
lulling, luxuriant June day, whose high tides of life 
spread to everything. Maxwell felt them in his weak 
pulses where he sat writing at an open window of the 
farmhouse, and early in the forenoon he came out on 
the piazza of the farmhouse, with a cushion clutched 
in one of his lean hands ; his soft hat-brim was pulled 
down over his dull, dreamy eyes, where the far-off look 
of his thinking still lingered. Louise was in the ham- 
mock, and she lifted herself alertly out of it at sight 
of him, with a smile for his absent gaze. 

“ Have you got through ? ” 

I’ve got tired ; or, rather, I’ve got bored. I 
thought I would go up to the camp.” 

“ You’re not going to lie on the ground, there ? ” 
she asked, with the importance and authority of a 
woman who puts herself in charge of a sick man, as 
a woman always must when there is such a man near 
her. 

‘‘ I would be willing to be under it, such a day as 
this,” he said. “ But I’ll take the shawl, if that^s 
what you mean. I thought it was here ? ” 

“ I’ll get it for you,” said Louise ; and he let her 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


325 


go into the parlor and bring it out to him. She laid 
it in a narrow fold over his shoulder ; he thanked her 
carelessly, and she watched him sweep languidly 
across the buttercupped and dandelioned grass of the 
meadow-land about the house, to the dark shelter of 
the pine grove at the north. The sun struck full 
'upon the long levels of the boughs, and kindled their 
needles to a glistening mass ; underneath, the ground 
was red, and through the warm-looking twilight of the 
sparse wood the gray canvas of a tent showed ; Matt 
often slept there in the summer, and so the place was 
called the camp. There was a hammock between two 
of the trees, just beyond the low stone wall, and 
Louise saw Maxwell get into it. 

Matt came out on the piazza in his blue woollen 
shirt and overalls and high boots, and his cork helmet 
topping all. 

“ You look like a cultivated cowboy that had gob- 
bled an English tourist. Matt/’ said his sister. ‘‘ Have 
you got anything for me ? ” 

Matt had some letters in his hands which the man 
had just brought up from the post-office. “ No ; but 
there are two for Maxwell — ” 

‘‘ I will carry them to him, if you’re busy. He’s 
just gone over to the camp.” 

‘‘ Well, do,” said Matt. He gave them to her, aiM 
he asked, “ How do you think he is, this morning ? ” 

“ He must be pretty well ; he’s been writing ever 
since breakfast.” 

I wish he hadn’t,” said Matt. “ He ought really 


326 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


to be got away somewhere out of the reach of news- 
papers. I’ll see. Louise, how do you think a girl 
like Sue Northwick would feel about an outright offer 
of help at such a time as this ? ” 

‘‘ How, help ? It's very difficult to help people,” 
said Louise, wisely. ‘‘ Especially when they’re not 
able to help themselves. Poor Sue ! I don’t know 
what she will do. If Jack Wilmington — but he 
never really cared for her, and now I don’t believe 
she cares for him. No, it couldn’t be.” 

“ No ; the idea of love would be sickening to her 
now.” 

Louise opened her eyes. “ Why, I don’t know 
what you mean. Matt. If she still cared for him, I 
can’t imagine any time when she would rather know 
that he cared for her.” 

‘‘ But her pride — wouldn’t she feel that she couldn’t 
meet him on equal terms — ” 

Oh, pride ! Stuff ! Do you suppose that a girl 
who really cared for a person would think of the terms 
she met them on ? When it comes to such a thing as 
that there is no pride ; and proud girls and meek girls 
are just alike — like cats in the dark.” 

‘‘ Do you think so ? ” asked Matt ; the sunny glisten, 
which had been wanting to them before, came into his 
eyes. 

“ I know so,” said Louise. “ Why, do you think 
that Jack Wilmington still — ” 

“ No ; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall 
run down to Boston to-morrow, and see father — Or, 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


327 


no! Mother won’t be back till to-morrow evening. 
Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it.” 

Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the 
cackle of his machine before she reached the camp 
with Maxwell’s letters. ^ 

“ Don’t get up ! ” she called to him, when he lifted 
himself with one arm at the stir of her gown over 
the pine-needles. “ Merely two letters that I thought 
perhaps you might want to see at once.” 

He took them, and glancing at one of them threw 
it out on the ground. This is from Ricker,” he 
he said, opening the other. “ If you’ll excuse me,” 
and he began to read it. ‘‘ Well, that is all right,” 
he said, when he had run it through. “ He can man 
age without me a little while longer ; but a few more 
days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin 
to feel like work, for the first time since I came up 
here.” 

“ The good air is beginning to tell,” said Louise, 
sitting down on the board which formed a bench be- 
tween two of the trees fronting the hammock. “ But 
if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil every- 
thing. You must stay the whole summer ” 

“ You rich people are amusing,” said Maxwell, 
turning himself on his side, and facing her. “ You 
think poor people can do what they like.” 

“ I think they can do what other people like,” said 
the girl, ‘‘ if they will try. What is to prevent your 
staying here till you get perfectly well ? ” 

“ The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly 


328 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


well, for one thing,” said Maxwell, watching with 
curious interest the play of the light and shade flecks 
on her face and figure. 

“ I know you will get well, if you stay,” she inter- 
rupted. 

‘‘ And for another thing,” he went on, ‘‘ the high 
and holy duty we poor people feel not to stop working 
for a living as long as we live. It’s a caste pride. 
Poverty obliges, as well as nobility.” 

“Oh, pshaw! Pride obliges, too. It’s your wicked 
pride. You’re worse than rich people, as you call us : 
a great deal prouder. Rich people will let you help 
them.” 

“ So would poor people, if they didn’t need help. 
You can take a gift if you don’t need it. You can 
accept an invitation to dinner, if you’re surfeited to 
loathing, but you can’t let any one give you a meal if 
you’re hungry. You rich people are like children, 
compared with us poor folks. You don’t know life ; 
you don’t know the world. I should like to do a girl 
brought up like you in the ignorance and helplessness 
of riches.” 

“ You would make me hateful.” 

“ I would make you charming.” 

“ Well, do me, then 1 ” 

“ Ah, you wouldn’t like it.” 

“Why?” 

“ Because — I found it out in my newspaper work, 
when I had to interview people and write them up — 
people don’t like to have the good points they have. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


329 


recognized; they want you to celebrate the good 
points they haven’t got. If a man is amiable and kind 
and has something about him that wins everybody’s 
heart, he wants to be portrayed as a very dignified and 
commanding character, full of inflexible purpose and 
indomitable will.” 

“ I don’t see,” said Louise, why you think I’m 
weak, and low-minded, and undignified.” 

Maxwell laughed. ‘‘ Did I say something of that 
kind?” 

‘‘ You meant it.” 

“ If ever I have to interview you, I shall say that 
under a mask of apparent incoherency and irrelevance, 
Miss Hilary conceals a profound knowledge of human 
nature and a gift of divination which explores the 
most unconscious opinions and motives of her inter- 
locutor. How would you like that ? ” 

Pretty well, because I think it’s true. But I 
shouldn’t like to be interviewed.” 

‘^Well, you’re safe from me. My interviewing 
days are over. I believe if I keep on getting better 
at the rate I’ve been going the last week, I shall be 
able to write a play this summer, besides doing my 
work for the Abstract. If I could do that, and it 
succeeded, the riddle would be read for me.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

I mean that I should have a handsome income, 
and could give up newspaper work altogether.” 

“ Could you ? How glorious ! ” said Louise, with 
the sort of maternal sympathy she permitted herself 


330 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


to feel for the sick youth. “ How much would you 
get for your play ? ” 

‘‘ If it was only reasonably successful, it would be 
worth five or six thousand dollars a year.” 

“ And is that a handsome income ? ” she asked, with 
mounting earnestness. 

He pulled himself up in the hammock to get her 
face fully in view, and asked, “ How much do you 
think I’ve been able to average up to this time ? ” 

‘‘I don’t know. I’m afraid I don’t know at all 
about such things. But I should like to.” 

Maxwell let himself drop back into the hammock. 
“ I think I won’t humiliate myself by giving the fig- 
ures. I’d better leave it to your imagination. You’ll 
be sure to make it enough.” 

“ Why should you be ashamed of it, if it’s ever so 
little ? ” she asked. “ But I know. It’s your pride. 
It’s like Sue North wick wanting to give up all her 
property because her father wrote that letter, and said 
he had used the company’s money. And Matt says it 
isn’t his property at all, and the company has no 
right to it. If she gives it up, she and her sister will 
have nothing to live on. And they wonH let them- 
selves be helped — any more than — than — yon 
will ! ” 

“No. We began with that; 2'>eople who need help 
can’t let you help them. Don’t they know where 
their father is ? ” 

“ No. But of course they must, now, before long.” 

Maxwell said, after the silence that followed upon 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


331 


this. I should like to have a peep into that man’s 
soul.” 

“ Horrors ! Why should you ? ” asked Louise. 

“It would be such splendid material. If he is fond 
of his children — ” 

“He and Sue dote upon eacli other. I don’t see 
how she can endure him ; he always made me feel 
creepy.” 

“ Then he must have written that letter to conciliate 
public feeling, and to make his children easier about 
him and his future. And now if you could see him 
when he realizes that he’s only brought more shame 
on them, and forced them to beggar themselves — 
it would be a tremendous situation.” 

“ But I shouldn’t like to see him at such a time* 
It seems to me, that’s worse than interviewing, Mr. 
Maxwell.” 

There was a sort of recoil from him in her tone, 
which perhaps he felt. It seemed to interest, rather 
than offend him. “ You don’t get the artistic point of 
view.” 

“ I don’t want to get it, if that’s it. And if your 
play is going to be about any such thing as that — ” 

“It isn’t,” said Maxwell. “ I failed on that. I 
shall try a comic motive.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Louise, in the concessive tone people 
use, when they do not know but they have wronged 
some one. She spiritually came back to him, but 
materially she rose to go away and leave him. 
She stooped for the letter h5 had dropped out of 


332 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


the hammock and gave it him. “ Don’t you want 
this?” 

Oh, thank you ! I’d forgotten it.” He glanced at 
the superscription, “It’s from Pinney. You ought to 
know Pinney, Miss Hilary, if you want the true artis- 
tic point of view.” 

“ Is he a literary man ? ” 

“ Pinney ? Did you read the account of the defal- 
cation in the Events — when it first came out ? All 
illustrations ? ” 

“ That ? I don’t wonder you didn’t care to read his 
letter ! Or perhaps he’s your friend — ” 

“ Pinney ’s everybody’s friend,” said Maxwell, with 
an odd sort of relish. “ He’s delightful. I should like 
to do Pinney. He’s a type.” Louise stood frowning 
at the mere notion of Pinney. “ He’s not a bad fel- 
low, Miss Hilary, though he is a remorseless inter- 
viewer. He would be very good material. He is a 
mixture of motives, like everybody else, but he has 
only one ambition : he wants to be the greatest news- 
paper man of his generation. The ladies nearly 
always like him. He never lets five minutes pass 
without speaking of his wife ; he’s so proud of her he 
can’t keep still.” 

“ I should think she would detest him.” 

“ She doesn’t. She’s quite as proud of him as he is 
of her. It’s affecting to witness their devotion — or 
it would be if it were not such a bore.” 

“ I can’t understand you,” said Louise, leaving him 
to his letter. 


XV. 


Part of Matt Hilary’s protest against the status in 
which he found himself a swell was to wash his face 
for dinner in a tin basin on the back porch, like the 
farm-hands. When he was alone at the farm he had 
the hands eat with him ; when his mother and sister 
were visiting him he pretended that the table was too 
small for them all at dinner and tea, though he con- 
tinued to breakfast with the hands, because the ladies 
were never up at his hour; the hands knew well 
enough what it meant, but they liked Matt. 

Louise found him at the roller-towel, after his em- 
blematic ablutions. Oh, is it so near dinner ? ” she 
asked. 

‘‘ Yes. Where is Maxwell ? ” 

“ I left him up at the camp.” She walked a little 
way out into the ground-ivy that matted the back-yard 
under the scattering spruce trees. 

Matt followed, and watched the homing and depart- 
ing bees around the hives in the deep, red-clovered 
grass near the wall. 

Those fellows will be swarming before long,” he 
said, with a measure of the good comradeship he felt 
for all living things. 

“ I don’t see,” said Louise, plucking a tender, green 


334 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


shoot from one of the lir boughs overhead, ‘‘ why Mr. 
Maxwell is so hard.'’ 

‘‘Is he hard?” asked Matt. “Well, perhaps he 
is.” 

“ He is very sneering and bitter,” said the girl. “ I 
don’t like it.” 

“ Ah, he’s to blame for that,” Matt said. “ But as 
for his hardness, that probably comes from his having 
had to make such a hard fight for what he wants to 
be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, 
but somehow we mostly admire them and applaud 
them for their success against odds. If we had a 
true civilization a man wouldn’t have to fight for the 
chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be 
himself. But I’m glad you don’t like Maxwell’s hard- 
ness ; I don't myself.” 

“ He seems to look upon the whole world as mate- 
rial, as he calls it ; he doesn’t seem to regard people 
as fellow beings, as you do. Matt, or even as servants 
or inferiors ; he hasn’t so much kindness for them as 
that.” 

“Well, that’s the odious side of the artistic nature,” 
said Matt, smiling tolerantly. “ But he’ll probably 
get over that ; he’s very young ; he thinks he has to 
be relentlessly literary now.” 

“ He’s older than I am ! ” said Louise. 

“ He hasn’t seen so much of the world.” 

“ He thinks he’s seen a great deal more. I don’t 
think he’s half so nice as we supposed. I should call 
him dangerous.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


335 


“ Oil, I shouldn’t say exactly,” Matt returned. 
“ But he certainly hasn’t our traditions. I’ll just step 
over and call him to dinner.” 

Oh, no ! Let me try if I can blow the horn.” She 
ran to where the long tin tube hung on the porch, and 
coming out with it again, set it to her lips and evoked 
some stertorous and crumby notes from it. Do you 
suppose he saw me ? ” she asked, running back with 
the horn. 

Matt could not say ; but Maxwell had seen her, and 
had thought of a poem which he imagined illustrated 
with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl lifting a long 
tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did 
not know whether to name it simply The Dinner 
Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe Calling the Gods to 
Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging 
over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Fin- 
ney’s letter, still opened, in the other. He said to 
Matt, who came out to get the cushion of him, 
“Here’s something I’d like to talk over with you, 
when you’ve the time.” 

“ Well, after dinner,” said Matt. 

Finney’s letter was a long one, written in pencil on 
one side of long slips of paper, like printer’s copy; 
the slips were each carefully folioed in the upper 
right hand corner ; but the language was the language 
of Finney’s life, and not the decorative diction which 
he usually addressed to the public on such slips of 
paper. 

“ I guess,” it began, “ I’ve got onto the biggest thing 
22 P 


336 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


yet, Maxwell. The Events is going to send me to do 
the Social Science Congress which meets in Quebec 
this year, and I’m going to take Mrs. Pinney along 
and have a good time. She’s got so she can travel 
first-rate, now ; and the change will do her and the 
baby both good. I shall interview the social science 
wiseacres, and do their proceedings, of course, but the 
thing that I’m onto is North wick. I’ve always felt 
that Northwick kind of belonged to yours truly, any- 
way ; I was the only man that worked him up in any 
sort of shape, at the time the defalcation came out, 
and I’ve got a little idea that I think will simply clean 
out all competition. That letter of his set me to 
thinking, as soon as I read it, and my wife and I both 
happened on the idea at the same time ; clear case of 
telepathy. Our idea is that Northwick didn’t go to 
Europe — of course he didn’t! — but he’s just holding 
out for terms with the company. I don’t believe he’s 
got off with much money ; but if he was going into 
business with it in Canada, he would have laid low till 
he’d made his investments. So my theory is that he’s 
got all the money he took with him except his living 
expanses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am 
not going to come home without trying hard. I am 
going to have a detective’s legal outfit, and I flatter 
myself I can get Northwick over the frontier some- 
how, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends 
of the Ponkwasset Company. I don’t know yet just 
how I shall do it, but I guess I shall do it. I shall 
have Mrs. Pinney’s advice and counsel, and she’s a 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


337 


team ; but I shall have to leave her and the baby at 
Quebec, while I’m roaming round in Rimouski and 
the wilderness generally, and I shall need active help. 

Now, I liked some things in that Abstract article 
of yours ; it was snappy and literary, and all that, and 
it showed grasp of the subject. It showed a humane’' 
and merciful spirit toward our honored friend that 
could be made to tell in my little game if I could get 
the use of it. So I’ve concluded to let you in on the 
ground floor, if you want to go into the enterprise with 
me ; if you don’t, don’t give it away ; that’s all. My 
idea is that Northwick can be got at quicker by two 
than by one ; but we have not only got to get at him, 
but we have got to get him ; and get him on this side 
of Jordan. I guess we shall have to do that by moral 
suasion mostly, and that’s where your massive and 
penetrating intellect will be right on deck. You won’t 
have to play a part, either ; if you believe that his 
only chance of happiness on earth is to come home 
and spend the rest of his life in State’s prison, you can 
conscientiously work him from that point of view. 
Seriously, Maxwell, I think this is a great chance. If 
there’s any of that money he speaks of we shalf have 
our pickings : and then as a mere scoop, if we get at 
Northwick at all, whether we can coax him over the 
line or not, we will knock out the fellow that fired 
the Ephesian dome so that he’ll never come to time in 
all eternity. 

“ I mean business. Maxwell ; I haven’t mentioned 
this to anybody but my wife, yet ; and if you don’t go 


338 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


in with me, nobody shall. I want yoUy old hoy^ and 
Pm willing to pay for you. If this thing goes through, 
I shall be in a position to name my own jilace and 
price on the Events, I expect to be managing editor 
before the year’s out, and then I shall secure the best 
talent as leading writer, which his name is Brice E. 
Maxwell, and don’t you forget it. 

“Now, you think it over, Maxwell. There’s no 
hurry. Take time. We’ve got to wait till the Soc. 
Sci. Congress meets, anyway, and we’ve got to let 
the professional pursuit die out. This letter of North- 
wick’s will set a lot of detectives after him, and if they 
can't find him, or can't work him after they’ve found 
him, they’ll get tired, and give him up for a bad job. 
Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step 
in and show what a free and untrammelled press can 
do to punish vice and reward virtue.” 


XVI. 


Maxwell explained to Matt, as he had explained 
to Louise, that Pinney was the reporter who had 
written up the Northwick case for The Events. He 
said, after Matt had finished reading the letter, “ 1 
thought you would like to know about this. I don’t 
regard Pinney’s claim on my silence where you’re 
concerned ; in fact, I don’t feel bound to him, any- 
way.” 

“Thank you,” said Matt. “Then I suppose his 
proposal doesn’t tempt you?” 

“Why, yes it does. But not as he imagines. I 
should like such an adventure well enough, because it 
would give me a glimpse of life and character that 1 
should like to know something about. But the re- 
porter business and the detective business wouldn’t 
attract me.” 

“No, I should suppose not,” said Matt. “What 
sort of fellow, personally, is this — Pinney ? ” 

“ Oh, he isn’t bad. He is a regular type,” said 
Maxwell, with tacit enjoyment of the typicality of 
Pinney. “ He hasn’t the least chance in the world of 
working up into any controlling place in the paper. 
They don’t know much in the Events office ; but they 
do know Pinney. He’s a great liar and a braggart, 


340 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


and lie has no more notion of the immunities of private 
life than — Well, perhaps it’s because he would as 
soon turn his life inside out as not, and in fact would 
rather. But he’s very domestic, and very kind-hearted 
to his wife ; it seems they have a baby now, and I’ve 
no doubt Pinney is a pattern to parents. He’s always 
advising you to get married ; but he’s a born Bohe- 
mian. He’s the most harmless creature in the world, 
so far as intentions go, and quite soft-hearted, but he 
wouldn’t spare his dearest friend if he could make 
copy of him ; it would be impossible. I should say 
he was first a newspaper man, and then a man. He’s 
an awfully common nature, and hasn’t the first literary 
instinct. If I had any mystery, or mere privacy that 
I wanted to guard, and I thought Pinney was on the 
scent of it, I shouldn’t have any more scruple in set- 
ting my foot on him than I would on that snake.” 

A little reptile, allured by their immobility, had 
crept out of the stone wall which they were standing 
near^ and lay flashing its keen eyes at them, and run- 
ning out its tongue, a forked thread of tremulous scar- 
let. Maxwell brought his heel down upon its head as 
he spoke, and ground it into the earth. 

Matt winced at the anguish of the twisting and 
writhing thing. ‘‘Ah, I don’t think I should have 
killed it ! ” 

“ I should,” said Maxwell. 

“Then you think one couldn’t trust him?” 

“ Yes. If you put your foot on him in some sort of 
agreement, and kept it there. Why, of course ! Any 


THE QUALITY OE MERCY. 


341 


man can be held. But don’t let Pinney have room to 
wriggle.” 

They turned, and walked away, Matt keeping the 
image of the tormented snake in his mind ; it some- 
how mixed there with the idea of Pinney, and uncon- 
sciously softened him toward the reporter, 

“ Would there be any harm,” he asked, after a 
while, “ in my acting on a knowledge of this letter in 
behalf of Mr, Northwick’s family ? ” 

“ Not a bit,” said Maxwell. “ I make you perfectly 
free of it, as far as I’m concerned ; and it can’t hurt 
Pinney, even if he ought to be spared. He wouldn’t 
spare you,'' 

‘‘ I don’t know,” said Matt, “ that I could justify 
myself in hurting him on that ground. I shall be 
careful about him. I don’t at all know that I shall 
want to use it; but it has just struck me that per- 
haps — But I don’t know ! I should have to talk 
with their attorney — 1 will see about it ! And I 

thank you very much, Mr. Maxwell.” 

‘‘ Look here, Mr. Hilary ! ” said Maxwell. “ Use 
Pinney all you please, and all you can ; but I warn 
you he is a dangerous tool. He doesn’t mean any 
harm till he’s tempted, and when it’s done he doesn’t 
think it’s any harm. He isn’t to be trusted an instant 
beyond his self-interest ; and yet he has flashes of un- 
selfishness that would deceive the very elect. Good 
heavens!” cried Maxwell, ‘‘if I could get such a 
character as Pinney’s into a story or a play, I wouldn’t 
take odds from any man living 1 ” 


342 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


His notion, whatever it was, grew upon Matt, so 
that he waited more and more impatiently for his 
mother’s return, in order to act upon it. When she 
did get back to the farm she could only report from 
the Northwicks that she had said pretty much what 
she thought she would like to say to Suzette concern * 
ing her wilfulness and obstinacy in wishing to give up 
her property ; but Matt inferred that she had at the 
same time been able to infuse so much motherly com- 
fort into her scolding that it had left the girl consoled 
and encouraged. She had found out from Adeline 
that their great distress was not knowing yet where 
their father was. Apparently he thought that his 
published letter was sufficient reassurance for the time 
being. Perhaps he did not wish them to get at him 
in any way, or to have his purposes affected by any 
appeal from them. Perhaps, as Adeline firmly be- 
lieved, his mind had been warped by his suffering — 
he must have suffered greatly — and he was not able 
to reason quite sanely about the situation. Mrs. Hil- 
ary spoke of the dignity and strength which both the 
sisters showed in their trial and present stress. She 
praised Suzette, especially ; she said her trouble 
seemed to have softened and chastened her; she was 
really a noble girl, and she had sent her love to 
Louise ; they had both wished to be remembered to 
every one. “ Adeline, especially, wished to be re- 
membered to you. Matt ; she said they should never 
forget your kindness.” 

Matt got over to Hatboro’ the next day, and went 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


343 


to see Putney, who received him with some ironical 
politeness, when Matt said he had come hoping to be 
useful to his clients, the Miss Northwicks. 

“Well, we all hope something of that kind, Mr. 
Hilary. You were here on a mission of that kind be- 
fore. But may I ask why you think I should believe 
you wish to be useful to them ? ’’ 

“ Why ? 

“ Yes. Your father is the president of the company 
Mr. Northwick had his little embarrassment with, and 
the natural presumption would be that you could not 
really be friendly toward his family.” 

“ But we are friendly ! All of us ! My father would 
do them any service in his power, consistent with his 
duty to — to — his business associates.” 

“ Ah, that’s just the point. And you would all do 
anything you could for them, consistent with your 
duty to him. That’s perfectly right — perfectly natu- 
ral. But you must see that it doesn’t form a ground 
of common interest for us. I talked with you about 
the Miss Northwicks’ affairs the other day — too much, 
I think. But I can’t to-day. I shall be glad to con- 
verse with you on any other tojDic — discuss the ways 
of God to man, or any little interest of that kind. 
But unless 1 can see my way clearer to confidence 
between us in regard to my clients’ affairs than I do 
at present, 1 must avoid them.” 

It was absurd ; but in his high good-will toward 
Adeline, and in his latent tenderness for Suzette, 

Matt was hurt by the lawyer’s distrust, somewhat as 
P* 


344 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


you are hurt when the cashier of a strange bank turns 
over your check and says you must bring some one to 
recognize you. It cost Matt a pang ; it took him a 
moment to own that Putney was right. Then he 
said, Of course, I must offer you proof somehow 
that I’ve come to you in good faith. I don’t know ex- 
actly how I shall be able to do it. Would the assur- 
ance of my friend, Mr. Wade, the rector of St. 
Michael’s — ” 

The name seemed to affect Putney pleasantly ; he 
smiled, and then he said, Brother Wade is a good 
man, and his words usually carry conviction, but this 
is a serious subject, Mr. Hilary.” He laughed, and 
concluded earnestly, “You mmt know that I can’t 
talk with you on any such authority. I couldn’t talk 
with Mr. Wade himself.” 

“ No, no ; of course not,” Matt assented ; and he 
took himself off crestfallen, ashamed of his own short- 
sightedness. 

There was only one way out of the trouble, and 
now" he blamed himself for not having tried to take 
that w^ay at the outset. He had justified himself in 
shrinking from it by many plausible excuses, but he 
could justify himself no longer. He rejoiced in feel- 
ing compelled, as it were, to take it. At least, now", 
he should not be acting from any selfish impulse, and 
if there were anything unseemly in what he was going 
to do, he should have no regrets on that score, even in 
the shame of failure. 


XVTI. 


Matt Hilary gave himself time, on his way to the 
Northwick place, or at least as much time as would 
pass between walking and driving, but that was be- 
cause he was impatient, and his own going seemed 
faster to his nerves than that of the swiftest horse 
could have seemed. At the crest of the upland 
which divides Hatboro’ from South Platboro’, and 
just beyond the avenue leading to Dr. Morrell’s 
house, he met Sue Northwick ; she was walking 
quickly, too. She was in mourning, but she had put 
aside her long, crape veil, and she came towards him 
with her proud face framed in the black, and looking 
the paler for it ; a little of her yellow hair showed 
under her bonnet. She moved imperiously, and Matt 
was afraid to think what he was thinking at sight of 
her. She seemed not to know him at first, or rather 
not to realize that it was he ; when she did, a joyful 
light, which she did not try to hide from him, flashed 
over her visage ; and Mr. Hilary ! ” she said as 
simply and hospitably as if their last parting had not 
been on terms of enmity that nothing could clear up 
or explain away. 

He ran forward and caught her hand. ‘‘ Oh, I 


346 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


am SO glad,” he said. “ I was going out to see you 
about something — very important ; and I might have 
missed you.” 

“ No. I was just coming to the doctor’s, and then 
I was going back. My sister isn’t at all well, and I 
thought she’d better see the doctor.” 

It’s nothing serious, I hope ? ” 

“ Oh, no. I think she’s a little worn out.” 

‘‘ I know ! ” said Matt, with intelligence, and noth- 
ing more was said between them as to the cause or 
nature of Adeline’s sickness. Matt asked if he might 
go up the doctor’s avenue with her, and they walked 
along together under the mingling elm and maple 
tops, but he deferred the matter he wished to speak 
of. They found a little girl playing in the road near 
the house, and Sue asked, “Is your father at home, 
Idella?” 

“Mamma is at home,” said the child. She ran 
forward, calling toward the open doors and windows, 
“ Mamma ! Mamma ! Here’s a lady ! ” 

“It isn’t their child,” Sue explained. “It’s the 
daughter of the minister who was killed on the rail- 
road, here, a year or two ago — a very strange man, 
Mr. Peck.” 

“ I have heard Wade speak of him,” said Matt. 

A handsome and very happy looking woman came 
to the door, and stilled the little one’s boisterous proc- 
lamation to the hoarse whisper of, “ A lady ! A 
lady ! ” as she took her hand ; but she did not rebuke 
or correct her. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


347 


‘‘ How do you do, Mrs. Morrell,” said Suzette, with 
rather a haughty distance ; but Matt felt that slie kept 
aloof with the pride of a person who comes from an 
infected house, and will not put herself at the risk of 
avoidance. “I wished to see Dr. Morrell about my 
sister. She isn’t well. Will you kindly ask him to 
call ? ” 

“ I will send him as soon as he comes,” said Mrs. 
Morrell, giving Matt that glance of liking which no 
good woman could withhold. Unless,” she added, 
“ you would like to come in and wait for him.” 

‘‘ Thank you, no,” said Suzette. “ I must go back 
to her. Good-by.” 

‘‘ Good-by ! ” said Mrs. Morrell. 

Matt raised liis hat and silently bowed ; but as 
they turned away, he said to Suzette, “ What a 
happy face ! What a lovely face ! What a good 
face ! ” 

‘‘ She is a very good woman,” said the girl. She 
has been very kind to us. But so has everybody. I 
couldn’t have believed it.” In fact, it was only the 
kindness of their neighbors that had come near the 
defaulter’s daughters ; the harshness and the hate had 
kept away. 

“ Why shouldn’t they be kind ? ” Matt demanded, 
with his heart instantly in his throat. I can’t imag- 
ine — at such a time — Don’t you know that I love 
you ? ” he entreated, as if that exactly followed ; there 
was, perhaps, a subtle spiritual sequence, transcending 
all order of logic in the expression of his passion. 


348 


TIIK QUALITY OF MERCY. 


She looked at liim over her shoulder as he walked 
by her side, and said, with neither surprise nor joy. 
How can you say such a thing to me ? ” 

“ Because it is true ! Because I can’t help it ! 
Because I wish to be everything to you, and I have 
to begin by saying that. But don’t answer me now ; 
you need never answer me. I only wish you to use 
me as you would use some one who loved you beyond 
anything on earth, — as freely as that, and yet not be 
bound or hampered by me in the least. Can you do 
that ? I mean, can you feel, ‘ This is my best friend, 
the truest friend that any one can have, and I will let 
him do anything and everything he wishes for me.' 
Can you do that, — say that ? ” 

‘‘ But how could I do that ? I doii’t understand 
you ! ” she said, faintly. 

Don’t, you ? I am so glad you don’t drive me 
from you — ” 

“ 1 ? Tou ! ” 

“ I was afraid — But now we can speak reason- 
ably about it ; I don’t see why people shouldn’t. I 
know it’s shocking to speak to you of such a thing at 
such a time. It’s dreadful ; and yet I can’t feel 
wrong to have done it ! No ! If it’s as sacred as it 
seems to me when I think of it, then it couldn’t be 
wrong in the presence of death itself. I do love you ; 
and I want you some day for my wife. Yes ! But 
don’t answer that now ! If you never answer me, or 
if you deny me at last, still I want you to let me be 
your true lover, while I can, and to do everything 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


349 


that your accepted lover could, whether you ever look 
at me again or not. Couldn't you do that?” 

“You know I couldn’t,” she answered, simply. 

“ Couldn’t you ? ” he asked, and he fell into a for- 
lorn silence, as if he could not say anything more. 
He forced her to take the word by asking, “ Then you 
are offended with me? ” 

“ How could I be ? ” 

“ Oh — ” 

“ It’s what any girl might be glad of — ” 

^Oh, my — 

“ And I am not so silly as to think there can be a 
wrong time for it. If there were, you would make 
it right, if you chose it. You couldn’t do anything 
I should think wrong. And I — I — love you, 
too — ” 

“ Suzette ! Suzette ! ” he called wildly, as if she 
were a great way off. It seemed to him his heart 
would burst. He got awkwardly before her, and tried 
to seize her hand. 

She slipped by him, with a pathetic “ Don’t ! But 
you know I never could be your wife. You know 
that.” 

“ I don't know it. Why shouldn’t you ? ” 

“ Because I couldn’t bring my father’s shame on m}" 
husband.” 

“It wouldn’t touch me, any more than it touches 
you I ” 

“It would touch your father and mother — and 
Louise.” 


350 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ They all admire you and honor you. They think 
you’re everything that’s true and grand.” 

“Yes, while I keep to myself. And I shall keep to 
myself. I know how ; and I shall not give way. 
Don’t think it ! ” 

“You will do what is right. I shall think that.” 

“ Don’t praise me ! I can’t bear it.” 

“ But I love you, and how can I help praising you ? 
And if you love me — ” 

“ I do. I do, with all my heart.” She turned and 
gave him an impassioned look from the height of her 
inapproachability. 

“ Then I won’t ask you to be my wife, Suzette ! I 
know how you feel ; I won’t be such a liar as to pre- 
tend I don’t. And I will respect your feeling, as the 
holiest thing on earth. And if you wish, w^e will be 
engaged as no other lovers ever were. You shall 
promise nothing but to let me help you all I can, for 
our love’s sake, and I will promise never to speak to 
you of our love again. That shall be our secret — 
our engagement. Will you promise ? ” 

“ It will be hard for you,” she said, with a pitying 
look, which perhaps tried him as sorely as anything 
could. 

“ Not if I can believe I am making it easy for you.” 

They walked along, and she said with averted eyes, 
that he knew had tears in them, I promise.” 

“ And I promise, too,” he said. 

She impulsively put out her left hand toward him, 
and he held its slim fingers in his right a moment, and 


THE QUALITY OF MERCT. 


351 


then let it drop. They both honestly thought they 
had got the better of that which laughs from its in- 
numerable disguises at all stratagems and all devices 
to escape it. 

“ And now,” he said, “ I want to talk to you about 
what brought me over here to-day. I thought at first 

that I was only going to see your lawyer.” 

23 


XVTII. 


Matt felt that he need now no longer practise 
those reserves in speaking to Sue of her father, which 
he had observed so painfully hitherto. Neither did 
she shrink from the fact they had to deal with. In the 
trust established between them, they spoke of it all 
openly, and if there was any difference in them con- 
cerning it, the difference was in his greater forbear- 
ance toward the unhappy man. They both spoke of 
his wrong-doing as if it were his infirmity ; they could 
not do otherwise ; and they both insensibly assumed 
his irresponsibility in a measure ; they dwelt in the 
fiction or the persuasion of a mental obliquity whicli 
would account for otherwise unaccountable things. 

It is what my sister has always said,” Sue eagerly 
assented to his suggestion of this theory. ‘‘ I suppose 
it’s what I’ve always believed, too, somehow, or I 
couldn’t have lived.” 

“Yes; yes, it must be so,” Matt insisted. “But 
now the question is how to reach him, and make some 
beginning of the end with him. I suppose it’s the sus- 
pense and the uncertainty that is breaking your sister 
down ? ” 

“ Yes — that and what we ought to do about giving 
up the property. We — quarrelled about that at first ; 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


353 


we couldn’t see it alike ; but now I’ve yielded ; we’ve 
both yielded ; and we don’t know what to do.” 

“ We must talk all that over with your lawyer, in 
connection with something I’ve just heard of.” He 
told her of Finney’s scheme, and he said, ‘‘We must 
see if we can’t turn it to account.” 

They agreed not to talk of her father with Adeline, 
but she began it herself. She looked very old and 
frail, as she sat nervously rocking herself in a corner 
of the cottage parlor, and her voice had a sharp, 
anxious note. “ What I think is, that now we know 
father is alive, we oughtn’t to do anything about the 
property without hearing from him. It stands to 
reason, don’t you think it does, Mr. Hilary, that he 
would know better than anybody else, what we ought 
to do. Any rate, I think we ought to wait and con- 
sult with him about it, and see what he says. The 
property belonged to mother in the first place, and he 
mightn’t like to have us part with it.” 

“ I don’t think you need trouble about that, now, 
Miss Northwick,” said Matt. “ Nothing need be 
done about the property at present.” 

“ But I keep thinking about it. I want to do what 
Sue thinks is right, and to see it just in the light she 
does ; and I’ve told her I would do e xactly as she 
said about it ; but now she won’t say ; and so I think 
we’ve got to wait and hear from father. Don’t you ? ” 

“ Decidedly, I think you ought to do nothing now, 
till you hear from him,” said Matt. 

“ I knew you would.” said the old maid. “ and if 


354 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Sue will be ruled by me, she’ll see that it will all turn 
out right. I know father, and I know he’ll want to 
do what is sensible, and at the same time honorable. 
He is a person who could never bear to wrong any 
one out of a cent. ’ 

Well,” said Sue, “ we will do what Mr. Hilary 
says ; and now, try not to worry about it any more,” 
she coaxed. 

“ Oh, yes ! It’s well enough to say not to worry 
now^ when my mind’s got going on it,” said the old 
maid, querulously •, she flung her weak frame against the 
chair-back, and she began to wipe the gathering tears. 
‘‘But if you’d agreed with me in the first place, it 
wouldn’t have come to this. Now I’m all broken 
down, and I don’t know when I shall be well again.” 

It was a painful moment; Sue patiently adjusted 
the cushion to her sister’s shoulders, while Adeline’s 
tongue ran helplessly on. “ You were so headstrong 
and stubborn, I thought you would kill me. You were 
just like a rock, and I could beat myself to pieces 
against you, and you wouldn’t move.” 

“ I was wrong,” said the proud girl, meekly, 

“I’m sure,” Adeline whimpered, “I hate to make 
an exhibition before Mr. Hilary, as much as any one, 
but I can’t help it ; no, I can’t. My nerves are all 
gone.” 

The doctor came, and Sue followed Matt out of 
doors, to leave he;-, for the first few confidential mo- 
ments, sacred to the flow of symptoms, alone with the 
physician. There was a little sequestered space among 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


355 


the avenue firs beside the lodge, with a bench, toward 
which he led the way, but the girl would not sit down. 
She stood with her arms fallen at her side, and looked 
him steadily in the face. 

“ It’s all true that she said of me. I set myself like 
a rock against her. I have made her sick, and if she 
died, I should be her murderer ! ” 

He put his arms round her, and folded her to his 
heart. “ Oh, my love, my love, my love ! ” he la- 
mented and exulted over her. 

She did not try to resist ; she let her arms hang at 
her side ; she said, Is this the way we keep our 
word ? — Already ! ” 

Our word was made to be broken ; we must have 
meant it so. I’m glad we could break it so soon. 
Now I can truly help you ; now that you are to be 
my wife.” 

She did not gainsay him, but she asked, What will 
you think when you know — you must have known 
that I used to care for some else ; but he never cared 
for me ? It ought to make you despise me ; it made 
me despise myself ! But it is true. I did care all the 
world for him, once. Now will you say — ” 

“ Now, more than ever,” said the young man, si- 
lencing her lips with his own, and in their trance of 
love the world seemed to reel away from under their 
feet, with all its sorrows and shames, and leave them 
in mid-heaven. 

“ Suzette ! ” Adeline’s voice called from within. 
‘‘ Suzette ! Where are you ? ” ^ 


356 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Sue released herself, and ran into the cottage. She 
came out again in a little while, and said that the doc- 
tor thought Adeline had better go to bed for a day or 
two and have a thorough rest, and relief from all ex- 
citement. “We mustn’t talk before her any more, 
and you mustn’t stay any longer,*’ 

He accepted the authority she instinctivel}^ assumed 
over him, and found his dismissal already of the order 
of things. He said, “ Yes, I’ll go at once. But 
about — ” 

She put a card into his hand. “ You can see Mr. 
Putney, and whatever you and he think best, will be 
best. Haven’t you been our good angel ever since — 
Oh, I’m not half good enough for you, and I shouldn’t 
be, even if there were no stain — ” 

“ Stop ! ” he said ; he caught her hand, and pulled 
her toward him. 

The doctor came out, and said in a low voice, 
“There’s nothing to be anxious about, but she really 
must have quiet. I’ll send Mrs. Morrell down to see 
you, after tea. She’s quiet itself.” 

Suzette submitted, and let Matt take her hand again 
in parting. 

“Will you give me a lift, doctor, if .you’re going 
toward town ? ” 

“ Get in,” said the doctor. 

Sue went indoors, and the two men drove off 
together. 

Matt looked at the card in his hand, and read ; 

“ Mr. Putney *. Please talk to Mr. Hilary as you 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


357 


would to my sister or me.” Suzette’s printed name 
served for signature. Matt put the card in his pocket- 
book, and then he said, ‘‘ What sort of man is Mr. 
Putney, doctor ? ” 

“Mr. Putney,” said the doctor, with a twinkle of 
his blue eyes, “ is one of those uncommon people who 
have enemies. He has a good many because he’s a 
man that thinks, and then says what he thinks. But 
he’s his own worst enemy, because from time to time 
he gets drunk.” 

“ A character,” said Matt. “ Do you think he’s a 
safe one? Doesn’t his getting drunk from time to 
time interfere with his usefulness ? ” 

“ Well, of course,” said the doctor. “ It’s bad for 
him; but I think it’s slowly getting better. Yes, 
decidedly. It’s very extraordinary, but ever since 
he’s been in charge of the Miss Northwicks’ inter- 
ests — ” 

“ Yes ; that’s what I was thinking of.” 

“He’s kept perfectly straight. It’s as if the re- 
sponsibilities had steadied him.” 

“ But if he goes on sprees, he may be on the verge 
of one that’s gathering violence from its postpone- 
ment,” Matt suggested. 

“ I think not,” said the doctor after a moment. 
“ But of course I can’t tell.” 

“ They trust him so implicitly,” said Matt. 

“ I know,” said the doctor. “ And I know that 
he’s entirely devoted to them. The fact is, Putney’s 
a very dear friend of mine.” 


.358 


thf: quality of mercy. 


“ Oh, excuse me — ’’ 

‘‘No, no ! ’’ The doctor stayed Matt’s apologies. 
“ I understand just what you mean. He disliked their 
father very much. He was principled against him as 
a merely rich man, with mischievous influence on the 
imaginations of all the poor people about him who 
wanted to be like him — ” 

“ Oh, that’s rather good,” said Matt. 

“ Do you think so ? ” asked the doctor, looking 
round at him. “ Well ! I supposed you would be all 
the other way. Well ! What I was saying was that 
Putney looks upon these poor girls as their father’s 
chief victims. I think he was touched by their com- 
ing to him, and has pitied them. The impression is 
that he’s managed their affairs very well ; I don’t 
know about such things ; but I know he’s managed 
them honorably ; I would stake my life on it ; and I 
believe he’ll hold out straight to the last. I suppose,” 
the doctor conjectured, at the end, “ that they will try 
to get at Northwick now, and arrange with his cred- 
itors for his return.” 

“ I don’t mind telling you,” said Matt, “ that it’s 
been tried and failed. The State’s attorney insists that 
he shall come back and stand his trial, first of all.” 

“ Oh ! ” said the doctor. 

“ Of course, that’s right from the legal point of 
view. But in the meantime, nobody knows where 
Mr. Northwick is.” 

“ I suppose,” said the doctor, “ it would have been 
better for him not to have written that letter.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


359 


‘‘ It’s hard to say,” Matt answered. “ I thought so, 
too, at first. I thought it was cowardly and selfish of 
liim to take away his children’s superstition about his 
honesty. You knew that they held to that through 
all?” 

‘‘ Most touching thing in the world,” said the 
doctor, leaning forward to push a fly off his horse 
with the limp point of his whip. That poor old 
maid has talked it into me till I almost believed it 
myself.” 

“ I don’t know that I should hold him severely 
accountable. And I’m not sure now that I should 
condemn him for writing that letter. It must have 
been a great relief to him. In a way, you may say 
he had to do it. It’s conceivable that if he had kept 
it on his mind any loi^iger, his mind would have given 
way. As it is, they have now the comfort of another 
superstition — if it is a superstition. What do you 
think, doctor ? Do you believe that there was a men- 
tal twist in him ? ” 

There seems to be in nearly all these defaulters. 
What they do is so senseless — so insane. I suppose 
that’s the true theory of all crime. But it won’t do to 
act upon it, yet awhile.” 

No.” 

The doctor went on after a pause, with a laugh of 
enjoyment at the notion. “ Above all, it won’t do to 
let the defaulters act upon that theory, and apply for 
admission to the insane asylums instead of taking the 
express for Canada, when they’re found out.” 

Q 


360 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Oh, no,” said Matt. . He wondered at himself for 
being able to analyze the offence of Suzette's father 
so cold-bloodedly. But in fact he could not relate the 
thought of her to the thought of him in his sin, at all ; 
he could only realize their kindred in her share of his 
ijulfering. 


XIX. 


Putney accepted Suzette’s authorization of Matt 
with apparent unconsciousness of anything but its im- 
mediate meaning, and they talked Finney’s scheme 
intimately over together. In the end, it still remained 
a question whether the energies of such an investiga- 
tor could be confined to the discovery of Northwick’s 
whereabouts ; whether his newspaper instincts would 
not be too strong for any sense of personal advantage 
that could be appealed to in him. They both believed 
that it would not be long before Northwick followed 
up the publication of his letter by some communica- 
tion with his family. 

But time began to go by again, and Northwick made 
no further sign ; the flurry of activity which his letter 
had called out in the detectives came to nothing. 
Their search was not very strenuous; North wick’s 
creditors were of various minds as to the amount of 
money he had carried away with him. Every one 
knew that if he chose to stay in Canada, he could not 
be molested there ; and it seemed very improbable 
that he could be persuaded to put himself within 
reach of the law. The law had no terms to offer 
him, and there was really nothing to be done. 

Putney forecast all this in his talk with Matt, when 


362 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


he held that they must wait Northwick’s motion. He 
professed himself willing to wait as long as Northwick 
chose, though he thought they would not have to wait 
long, and he contended for a theory of the man’s whole 
performance which he said he should like to have 
tested before a jury. 

Matt could not make out how much he really meant 
by saying that Northwick could be defended very 
fairly on the ground of insanity ; and that he would 
enjoy managing such a defence. It was a common 
thing to show that a murderer was insane ; why not a 
defaulter ? Tilted back in his chair, with one leg over 
the corner of his table, and changing the tobacco m 
his mouth from one cheek to the other as he talked, 
the lawyer outlined the argument which he said could 
be made very effective. There was the fact to begin 
with, that Northwick was a very wealthy man, and 
had no need of more money when he began to specu- 
late ; Putney held that this want of motive could be 
made a strong point ; and that the reckless, almost 
open, way in which Northwick used the company’s 
money, when he began to borrow, was proof in itself 
of unsound mind : apparently he had no sense what- 
ever of meum and tuum, especially tuum. Then, the 
total collapse of the man when he was found out ; his 
flight without an effort to retrieve himself, although 
his shortage was by no means hopelessly vast, and 
could have been almost made up by skilful use of the 
credit that Northwick could command, was another 
evidence of shaken reason. But besides all this, there 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


363 


was liis behavior since he left home. He had been 
absent nearly five months, and in that time he had 
made no attempt whatever to communicate with his 
family, although he must have known that it was per- 
fectly safe for him to do so. He was a father who 
was almost dotingly fond of his children, and singu- 
larly attached to his home ; yet he had remained all 
that time in voluntary exile, and he had left them in 
entire uncertainty as to his fate except so far as they 
could accept the probability of his death by a horrible 
casualty. This inversion of the natural character of 
a man was one of the most striking phenomena of 
insanity, and Putney, for the purpose of argument, 
maintained that it could be made to tell tremendously 
with a jury. 

Matt was unable to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics 
of the case with Putney. He said gravely that he 
had been talking of the matter with Dr. Morrell, and 
he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in 
every wrong-doer ; some day he believed the law 
would take cognizance of the fact. 

I don’t suppose the time is quite ripe yet, though 
I think I could make out a strong case for Brother 
Northwick,” said Putney. He seemed to enter into 
it more fully, as if he had a mischievous perception of 
Matt’s uneasiness, and chose to torment him ; but 
then apparently he changed his mind, and dealt with 
other aspects of their common interest so seriously 
and sympathetically, that Matt parted from him with 
a regret that he could not remove the last barrier be- 


364 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


tween them, and tell the lawyer that he concerned 
himself so anxiously in the affairs of that wretched 
defaulter because his dearest hope was that the 
daughter of the criminal would some day be his wife. 

But Matt felt that this fact must first be confided to 
those who were nearest him ; and how to shape it in 
terms that would convey the fact and yet hide the re- 
pulsiveness he knew in it, was the question that teased 
him all the way back to Vardley, like some tiresome 
riddle. He understood why his love for Suzette 
Northwick must be grievous to his father and mother ; 
how embarrassing, how disappointing, how really in 
some sort disastrous ; and yet he felt that if there 
was anything more sacred than another in the world 
for him, it was that love. He must be true to it 
at whatever cost, and in every event, and he must 
begin by being perfectly frank with those whom it 
would afflict, and confessing to himself all its difficul- 
ties and drawbacks. He was not much afraid of deal- 
ing with his father ; they were both men, and they 
could look at it from the man’s point of view. Be- 
sides, his father really cared little what people would 
say ; after the first fever of disgust, if he did not 
change wholly and favor it vehemently, he would see 
so much good in it that he would be promptly and 
finally reconciled. 

But Matt knew that his mother was of another 
make, and that the blow would be much harder for 
her to bear ; his problem was how to lighten it. 
Sometimes he thought he had better not try to lighten 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


865 


it, but let it fall at once, and trust to her affection and 
good sense for the rest. But when he found himself 
alone with her that night, he began by making play 
and keeping her beyond reach. He was so lost in 
this perverse effort that he was not aware of some 
such effort on her part, till she suddenly dropped it, 
and said, Matt, there is something I wish to speak to 
you about — very seriously.” 

His heart jumped into his throat, but he said 
‘‘ Well ? ” and she went on. 

‘‘ Louise tells me that you think of bringing this 
young man down to the shore with you when you 
come to see us next week.” 

Maxwell ? I thought the chancre mig^ht do him 
good ; yes,” said Matt, with a cowardly joy in his 
escape from the worst he feared. He thought she was 
going to speak to him of Suzette. 

She said, ‘‘ I don’t wish you to bring him. I don’t 
wish Louise to see him again after she leaves this 
place — ever again. She is fascinated with him.” 

‘‘ Fascinated ? ” 

can’t call it anything else. I don’t say that 
she’s in love ; but there’s no question but she’s 
allowed her curiosity to run wild, and her fancy to be 
taken ; the two strongest things in her — in most 
girls. I want to break it all up.” 

“ But do you think — ” 

“I know. It isn’t that she’s with him at every 
moment, but that her thoughts are with him when 
they’re apart. He puzzles her ; he piques her ; she’s 


366 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


always talking and asking about liini. It’s their dif- 
ference in everything that does it. I don’t mean to 
say that her heart is touched, and I don’t intend it 
shall be. So, you mustn’t ask him to the shore with 
you, and if you’ve asked him already, you must get 
out of it. If you think he needs sea air, you can get 
him board at some of the resorts. But not near us.” 
She asked, in default of any response from her son, 
“ You don't think. Matt, it would be well for the ac- 
quaintance to go on ? ” 

‘‘ No, I don’t mother ; you’re quite right as to that,” 
said Matt, “if you’re not mistaken in supposing — ” 

“ I’m not ; you may depend upon it. And I’m glad 
you can see the matter from my point of view. It is 
all very well for you to have your queer opinions, and 
even to live them. I think it’s all ridiculous ; but 
your father and I both respect you for your sincerity, 
though your course has been a great disappointment 
to us.” 

“ I know that, mother,” said Matt, groaning in 
spirit to think how much worse the disappointment 
he was meditating must be, and feeling himself dis- 
honest and cowardly, through and through. 

“ But I feel sure,” Mrs. Hilary went on, “ that 
when it’s a question of your sister, you would wish her 
life to be continued on the same plane, and in the sur- 
roundings she had always been used to.” 

“ I should think that best, certainly, for a girl of 
Louise’s ideas,” said Matt, trying to get his own to 
the surface. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


367 


‘‘ Ideas ! ’’ cried his mother. She has no ideas. 
She merely has impulses, and her impulses are to do 
what people wish. But her education and breeding 
have been different from those of such a young man, 
and she would be very unhappy with him. They 
never could quite understand each other, no matter 
how much they were in love. I know he is very 
talented, and all that ; and I shouldn’t at all mind his 
being poor. I never minded Cyril Wade’s being poor, 
when I thought he had taken her fancy, because he 
was one of ourselves ; and this young man — Matt, 
you canH pretend, that with all his intellectual qual- 
ities, he’s what one calls a gentleman. With his ori- 
gin and bringing up ; his coarse experiences ; all his 
trials and struggles ; even with his successes, he 
couldn’t be ; and Louise could not be happy with 
him for that very reason. He might have all the 
gifts, all the virtues, under the sun ; I don’t deny that 
he has — ” 

He has some very serious faults,” Matt inter- 
rupted. 

‘‘ We all have,” said Mrs. Hilary, tolerantly. “But 
he might be a perfect saint — a hero — a martyr, and 
if he wasn’t what one calls a gentleman, don’t you 
see ? We can’t be frank about such things, here, 
because we live in a republic ; but — ” 

“ We get there, just the same,” said Matt, with 
unwonted slang. 

“ Yes,” said his mother. “ That is what I mean.” 

“ And 3^ou’re quite right, as to the facts, mother.” 

24 Q* 


368 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


He got up, and began to walk about the long, low 
living-room of the farm-house where they were sitting. 
Louise had gone to direct her maid in packing for her 
flitting to the seaside in the morning ; Matt could see 
a light in the ell-chamber where Maxwell was proba- 
bly writing. ‘‘ The self-made man can never be the 
society equal of the society-made man. He may have 
more brains, more money, more virtue, but he’s a 
kind of inferior, and he betrays his inferiority in every 
worldly exigency. And if he’s successful, he’s so be- 
cause he’s been stronger, fiercer, harder than others in 
the battle of life. That’s one reason why I say that 
there oughtn’t to he any battle of life. Maxwell has 
the defects of his disadvantages — I see that. He’s 
often bitter, and cynical, and cruel because he has had 
to fight for his bread. He isn’t Louise’s social equal ; 
I quite agree with you there, mother ; and if she wants 
to live for society, he would be always in danger of 
wounding her by his inferiority to other people of 
her sort. I’m sorry for Maxwell, but I don’t pity 
him, especially. He bears the penalty of his mis- 
fortunes ; but he is strong enough to bear it. Let 
him stand it ! But there are others — weaker, un- 
happier — Mother! You haven’t asked me yet 
about — the North wicks.” Matt stopped in front of 
her chair, and looked down into her lifted face, where 
the satisfaction his acquiescence in her views concerning 
Louise was scarcely marred by her perception that he 
had not changed his mind at all on other points. She 
was us'ed to his way of thinking, and she gratefully 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


369 


resolved to be more and more patient with it, and give 
him time for the change that was sure to come. She 
interpreted the look of stormy wistfulness he wore as 
an expression of his perplexity in the presence of the 
contradictory facts and theories. 

‘‘ No,” she said, I expected to do that. You know 
I’ve seen them so very lately, and with this about 
Louise on my mind — How are they ? That poor 
Adeline — I’m afraid it’s killing her. Were you 
able to do anything for them ? ” 

‘‘ Ah, I don’t know,” the young man sighed. They 
have to suffer for their misfortunes, too.” 

“ It seems to be the order of Providence,” said Mrs. 
Hilary, with the resignation of the philosophical spec- 
tator. 

‘‘ No !” Matt protested. “It’s the disorder of im- 
providence. There’s nothing of the Divine will in 
consequences so unjust and oppressive. Those women 
are perfectly innocent; they’ve only wished to do 
right, and tried to do it ; but they’re under a ban the 
same as if they had shared their father’s guilt. They 
have no friends — ” 

“ Well, Matt,” said his mother, with dignity, “ I 
think you can hardly say that. I’m sure that as far 
as we are concerned, we have nothing to reproach our- 
selves with. I think we’ve gone to the extreme to 
show our good-will. How much further do you want 
us to go ? Come ; I don’t like your saying this ! ” 

“ I beg your pardon. I certainly don’t blame you, 
or Louise, or father. I blame myself — for cowardice 


370 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


— for — for un worthiness in being afraid to say — to 
tell you — Motherj” he burst out suddenly, after a 
halt, ‘‘ IVe asked Suzette Northwick to marry me.” 

Matt had tried to imagine himself saying this to his 
moth^ and the effect it would have, ever since he 
had left Suzette’s absorbing presence ; all through his 
talk with Putney, and all the way home, and now 
throughout what he and his mother had been saying 
of Maxwell and Louise. % But it always seemed im- 
possible, and more and more impossible, so that when 
he found the words spoken in his own voice, it seemed 
wholly incredible. 


XX. 




The effect of a thing is never q«ife what we have 
forecast. Mrs. Hilary hearfl Matt’s confession with- 
out apparently anything of^is tumult in making it. 
Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the af- 
fections ; even the most worldly women have their likes 
and dislikes, and the question of the sort Matt had 
sprung upon his mother., is first a personal question with 
them. She was not a very worldly woman ; but she 
liked her place in the world, and she preferred con- 
formity and similarity ; the people she was born of 
and bred with, were the nicest kind of people, and she 
did not see how any one could differ from them to 
advantage. Their ideas were the best, or they would 
not have had them ; she, herself, did not wish to have 
other ideas. But her family was more, far more, to 
her than her world was. She knew that in his time her 
husband had not had the ideas of her world concern- 
ing slavery, but she had always contrived to honor the 
ideas of both. Since her son had begun to disagree 
with her world concerning what he called the indus- 
trial slavery, she contrived, without the sense of incon- 
sistency, to suffer him and yet remain with the world. 
She represented in her maternal tolerance, the principle 
actuating the church, which includes the facts as fast 




372 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


as they accomplish themselves, without changing any 
point of doctrine. 

“ Then you mean, Matt,’’ she asked, ‘‘ that you are 
going to marry her ? ” 

‘‘ Yes,” said Matt, that is what I mean,” and then, 
something in his mother’s way of taking it nettled him 
on Sue’s behalf. But I don’t know that my marry- 
ing her necessarily followed from my asking her. I 
expected her to refuse me.” 

Men always do ; I don’t know why,” said Mrs. 
Hilary. “ But in this case I can’t imagine it.” 

Can’t imagine it ? I can imagine it ! ” Matt re- 
torted; but his mother did not seem to notice his 
resentment. 

“Then, if it’s quite settled, you don’t wish me to 
say anything ? ” 

“ I wish you to say everything, mother — all that 
you feel and think — about her, and the whole affair. 
But I don’t wish you to think — I can’t let you think 
— that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed me 
to suppose that my offer would be welcome.” 

“ Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Mrs. Hilary. “ She 
would be too proud for that. But I’ve no doubt it 
was welcome.” Matt fretted in silence, but he allowed 
his mother to go on. “ She is a very proud girl, and 
I’ve no doubt that what she’s been through has inten- 
sified her pride.” 

“ I don’t suppose she’s perfect,” said Matt. “ I’m 
not perfect, myself. But I don’t conceal her faults 
from myself any more than I do my own. I know 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


373 


she’s proud. I don’t admire pride ; but I suppose 
that with her it cau’t be helped.” 

“ I don’t know that I object to it,” said Mrs. Hilary. 
“ It doesn’t always imply hardness ; it goes with very 
good things, sometimes. That hauteur of hers is very 
effective. I’ve seen it carry her through with people 
who might have been disposed to look down on her 
for some reasons.” 

‘‘ I shouldn’t value it, for that,” Matt interrupted. 

“No. But she made it serve her instead of her 
want of those family connections that every one else 
has — ” 

“ She will have all of ours, I hope, mother ! ” Matt 
broke in, with a smile ; but his mother would not be 
diverted from the point she was making. 

“ And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn’t 
have. I’m sure that to see her come into a room, you 
would think half Boston, or all the princes of the 
blood, were her cousins. She’s certainly a magnifi- 
cent creature.” 

Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, 
in all her worldly reasons for admiring Suzette, but 
her praises filled his heart to overflowing. Tears 
stood in his eyes, and his vome trembled : 

“ She is — she is — angelically ! ” 

“ Well, not just that type, perhaps,” said Mrs. Hil- 
ary. “ But she is a good girl. No one can help re- 
specting her ; and I think she’s even more to be re- 
spected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of 
hers about their property, than for wishing to give it 
up.” 


374 


THE QUALITY OF MEHCY. 


“ Yes/’ Matt breathed gratefully. 

“ But there, there is the real skeleton, Matt ! Su- 
zette would grace the highest position. But her father ! 
What will people say ? ” 

“ Need we mind that, mother ? ” 

Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as 
they were — if he had never been heard from again. 
But that letter of his ! And what will he do next ? 
He may come home, and offer to stand his trial ! ” 

would respect him for that ! ” cried Matt passion- 
ately. 

“ Matt!” 

‘‘It isn’t a thing I should urge him to do. He may 
not have the strength for it. But if he had, it would 
be the best thing he could do, and I should be glad to 
stand by him ! ” 

“ And drag us all through the mire ? Surely, my 
son, whatever you feel about your mother and sister, 
you can’t wish your poor father to suffer anything 
more on that wretch’s account ? ” 

“ Wish ? No. And heaven knows how deeply 
anxious I am about the effect my engagement may 
have on father. I’m afraid it will embarrass him — 
compromise him, even — ^ ” 

“ As to that, I can’t say,” said Mrs. Hilary. “ You 
and he ought to know best. One thing is certain. 
There won’t be any opposition on his part or mine, my 
son, that you won’t see yourself is reasonable — ” 

“ Oh, I am sure of that, mother ! And I can’t tell 
you how deeply I feel — ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


375 


“ Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do ; 
but I dou’t believe he could stand any more Quixotism 
from you, Matt, and if you intend to make your mar- 
riage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into 
State’s prison, you may be very sure your father 
won’t approve of your marriage.” 

Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which 
his mother did not perceive so keenly. 

“ I don’t intend that, exactly.” 

“ And I’m satisfied, as it is, he won’t be easy about 
it till the thing is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if 
it’s let alone.” 

But father can’t let it alone ! ” said Matt. It’s 
his duty to follow it up at every opportunity. I don’t 
want you to deceive yourself about the matter. I 
want you to understand just how it will be. I have 
tried to face it squarely, and I know how it looks. I 
shall try to make Suzette see it as I do, and I’m sure 
she will. I don’t think her father is guiltier than a 
great many other people who haven’t been found out. 
But he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake 
of the community, to be willing to bear the penalty 
the law inflicts. That is his only hope, his salvation, 
his duty. Father’s duty is to make him bear it 
whether he’s willing or not. It’s a much more odious 
duty—” 

I don’t understand you. Matt, saying your father’s 
part is more odious than a self-confessed defaulter’s.” 

No, I don’t say — ” 

‘‘ Then I think you’d better go to your father, and 


376 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


reconcile your duty with his, if you can. I wash my 
hands of the affair. It seems to me, though, that 
you’ve quite lost your head. The world will look 
very differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose 
father died in Canada, nobody could remember just 
why, from what it will on one whose father was sent 
to State’s prison for taking money that didn’t belong 
to him.” 

Matt flung up his arms ; Oh, the world, the world ! 
I won’t let the world enter ! I will never let Suzette 
face its mean and cruel prejudices. She will come 
here to the farm with me, and we will live down the 
memory of what she has innocently suffered, and we 
will let the world go its way.” 

“ And don’t you think the world will follow you 
here? Don’t you suppose it is here, ready to wel- 
come you home with all those prejudices you hope you 
can shun ? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will 
point Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is 
serving his term in jail for fraud. The great world 
forgets, but this little world around you here would 
remember it as long as either of you lived. No ; the 
day you marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up 
your mind to follow her father into exile, or else to 
share his shame with her at home.” 

“I’ve made up toy mind to share that shame at 
home. I never could ask her to run from it.” 

“Then for pity’s sake, let that miserable man alone, 
wherever he is. Or, if you can get at him, beg him 
to stay away, and keep still till he dies. Good-night.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


377 


Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped 
over Matt, where he had sunk in his, and kissed his 
troubled forehead. He thought he had solved one 
part of his problem ; but her words showed him that 
he had not rightly seen it in that light of love which 
had really hid it in dazzling illusions. 

The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met 
his father with it ; he thought it had only grown 
tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew how to 
present it. His mother had not only promised not to 
speak to his father of the affair, she had utterly re- 
fused to speak of it, and Matt instantly perceived that 
the fact he announced was somehow far more unex- 
pected to his father than it had seemed to his mother. 

But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness 
for his son, in all his amazement, that touched Matt 
more keenly than any other fashion of meeting it 
could have done. He asked if it were something that 
Matt had done, or had merely made up his mind some 
time to do ; and when Matt said it was something he 
had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he 
said, “ I shall have to take some action about it.” 

“ How, action ? ” 

‘‘ Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as 
this thing becomes known — and you wish it to be 
known, of course — ” 

“ Of course ! ” 

. It will be impossible for me to continue holding 
my present relation to Northwick.” 

“ To Northwick ? ” 


378 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ As president of the Board, I’m ex officio his en- 
emy and persecutor. It wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t 
be decent, for me to continue that after it was known 
that you were going to marry his daughter. It 
wouldn’t be possible. I must resign, I must with- 
draw from the Board altogether. I haven’t the stuff 
in me to do my official duty at such a cost ; so I’d 
better give up my office, and get rid of my duty.” 

“ That will be a great sacrifice for you, father,” 
said Matt. 

“ It won’t bring me to want, exactly, if you mean 
money-wise.” 

I didn’t mean money-wise. But I know you’ve 
always enjoyed the position so much.” 

Hilary laughed uneasily. “ Well, it hasn’t been a 
bed of roses since we discovered Northwick’s obliqui- 
ties — excuse me ! ” 

Matt blushed. ‘‘ Oh, I know he’s oblique, as such 
things go.” 

“ In fact,” his father resumed, I shall be glad to 
be out of it, and I don’t think there’ll be much oppo- 
sition to my going out ; I know that there’s a growing 
feeling against me in the Board. I have triSd to carry 
water on both shoulders. I’ve made the effort hon- 
estly ; but the effect hasn’t been good. I couldn’t 
keep my heart out of it ; from tlie very first I pitied 
that poor devil’s children so that I got him and gave 
him all the chance I could.” 

‘‘ That was perfectly right. It was the only busi- 
ness-like — ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


379 


“ It wasn’t business-like to hope that even if justice 
were defeated he might somehow, anyhow, escape the 
consequences of his crime ; and I’m afraid this is what 
I’ve hoped, in spite of myself,” said Hilary. 

This was so probably true that Matt could not help 
his father deny it. He could only say, “I don’t be- 
lieve you’ve ever allowed that hope to interfere with 
the strict performance of your duty, at any moment.” 

“ No ; but I’ve had the hope ; and others have had 
the suspicion that I’ve had it. I’ve felt that ; and I’m 
glad that it’s coming to an end. I’m not ashamed of 
your choice. Matt ; I’m proud of it. The thing gave 
me a shock at first, because I had to face the part I 
must take. But she’s all kinds of a splendid girl. 
The Board knows what she wished to do, and why 
she hasn’t done it. No one can help honoring her. 
And I don’t believe people will think the less of any 
of us for your wanting to marry her. But if they do, 
they may do it, and be damned.” 

Hilary shook himself together with greater comfort 
than he had yet felt, upon this conclusion : but he 
lapsed again after the long hand-pressure that he 
exchanged with his son. 

‘‘ We must make it our business, now, to see that 
no man loses anything by that — We must get at 
him somehow. Of course, they have no more notion 
where he is than we have.” 

“ No ; not the least,” said Matt. I think it’s the 
uncertainty that’s preying upon Miss Northwick.” 

“The man’s behaving like a confounded lunatic,” 
said Hilary. 


380 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


The word reminded Matt of Putney, and he said, 
“ That’s their lawyer’s theory of him — ” 

‘‘ Oh, you’ve seen him, have you ? Odd chap.” 

Yes ; I saw him when I was up there, after — 
after — at the request of Suzette. I wished to talk 
with him about the scheme that Maxwell’s heard 
of from a brother reporter,” and Matt now unfolded 
Finney’s plan to his father, and showed his letter. 

Hilary looked from it at his son. You don’t mean 
that this is the blackguard who wrote that account of 
the defalcation in the Events F ” 

“ Yes ; the same fellow. But as to blackguard — ” 
‘‘ Well, then. Matt, 1 don’t see how we can employ 
him. It seems to me it would be a kind of insult to 
those poor girls.” 

I had thought of that. I felt that. But after all, 
I don’t think he knew how much of a blackguard he 
was making of himself. Maxwell says he wouldn’t 
know. And besides, we can’t help ourselves. If he 
doesn’t go for us, he will go for himself. We must 
employ him. He’s a species of condottiere ; we can 
buy his allegiance with his service : and we must 
forego the sentimental objection. I’ve gone all over 
it, and that’s the only conclusion.” 

Hilary fumed and rebelled ; but he saw that they 
could not help themselves, that they could not do 
better. He asked, And what did their lawyer think 
of it?” 

“ He seemed to think we had better let it alone for 
the present, better wait and see if Mr. North wick 
would not try to communicate with his family.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


381 


I’m not so sure of that,” said Hilary. If this 
fellow is such a fellow as you say, I don’t see why we 
shouldn’t make use of him at once.” 

Make use of him to get Mr. Northwick back ? ” 
said Matt. “I think it would be well for him to 
come back, but voluntarily — ” 

‘‘ Come back ? ” said Hilary, whose civic morality 
flew much lower than this. ‘‘ Nonsense ! And stir 
the whole filthy mess up in the courts? I mean, 
make use of this fellow to find him, and enable us to 
find out just how much money he has left, and how 
much we have got to supply, in order to make up his 
shortage.” 

Matt now perceived the extent of his father’s pur- 
pose, and on its plane he honored it. 

‘‘ Father, you’re splendid ! ” 

Stuff! I’m in a corner. What else is there to 
do ? What less could we do ? What’s the money 
for, if it isn’t to — ” Hilary choked with the emotion 
that filled him at the sight of his son’s face. 

Every father likes to have his grown-up son think 
him a good man ; it is the sweetest thing that can come 
to him in life, far sweeter than a daughter’s faith in 
him ; for a son knows whether his father is good or 
not. At the bottom of his soul Hilary cared more for 
his son’s opinion than most fathers ; Matt was a crank, 
but because he was a crank, Hilary valued his judg- 
ment as something ideal. 

After a moment he asked, ‘‘ Can this fellow be got 
at?” 


382 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Oh, I imagine very readily.” 

“ What did Maxwell say about him, generally ? ” 

‘‘ Generally, that he’s not at all a bad kind of fellow. 
He’s a reporter by nature, and he’s a detective upon 
instinct. He’s done some amateur detective work, 
as many reporters do — according to Maxwell’s ac- 
count. The two things run together — and he’s very 
shrewd and capable in his way. He’s going into it as 
a speculation, and of course he wants it to be worth 
his while. Maxwell says his expectation of newspa- 
per promotion is mere brag ; they know him too well 
to put him in any position of control. He’s a mixture, 
like everybody else. He’s devotedly fond of his wife, 
and he wants to give her and the baby a change of 
air — ” 

‘‘ My idea,” Hilary interrupted, would be not to 
wait for the Social Science Convention, but to send 
this — ” 

Pinney.” 

Pinney at once. Will you see him ” 

‘‘ If you have made up your mind.” 

‘‘ I’ve made up my mind. But handle the wretch 
carefully, and for heaven’s sake bind him hy all that’s 
sacred — if there’s anything sacred to him — not to 
give the matter away. Let him fix his price, and 
offer him a pension for his widow afterwards.” 


XXI. 


Mrs. Hilary was a large woman, of portly frame, 
the propliecy in amplitude of what her son might come 
to be if he did not carry the activities of youth into his 
later life. She, for her part, was long past such activ- 
ities ; and yet she was not a woman to let the grass 
grow upon any path she had taken. She appointed 
the afternoon of the day following her talk with Matt 
for leaving the farm and going to the shore ; Louise 
was to go with her, and upon the whole she judged it 
best to tell her why, when the girl came to say good- 
night, and to announce that her packing was finished. 

“ But what in the world are we in such a hurry for, 
mamma, all of a sudden ? ” 

We are in a hurry because — don’t you really 
know, Louise ? — because in the crazy atmosphere of 
this house, one loses the sense of — of proportion — of 
differences.” 

“Aren’t you rather — Emersonian, mamma ? ” 

“ Do you think so, my dear ? Matt’s queer notions 
infect everybody ; I don’t blame you^ particularly ; and 
the simple life he makes people lead — by leading it 
himself, more than anything else — makes you think 
that you could keep on living just as simply if you 

wished, everywhere.” 

25 R 


384 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


‘‘ It’s very sweet — it’s so restful,” sighed the girl. 
‘‘ It makes you sick of dinners and ashamed of dances.” 

But you must go back to them ; you must go hack 
to the world you belong to ; and you’d better not carry 
any queer habits back with you.” 

You are rather sphinx-like, mamma ! Such hab- 
its, for instance, as ? ” 

‘‘As Mr. Maxwell.” The girl’s face changed ; her 
mother had touched the quick. She went on, looking 
steadily at her daughter, “ You know he wouldn’t do, 
there.” 

“ No ; he wouldn’t,” said Louise, promptly ; so 
mournfully, though, that her mother’s heart relented. 

“ I’ve seen that you’ve become interested in him, 
Louise ; that your fancy is excited ; he stimulates 
your curiosity. I don’t wonder at it ! He is very 
interesting. He makes you feel his power more than 
any other young man I’ve met. He charms your 
imagination even when he shocks your taste.” 

“ Yes ; all that,” said Louise, desolately. 

“ But he does shock your taste ? ” 

“ Sometimes — not always.” 

“ Often enough, though, to make the difference that 
I’m afraid you’ll lose the sense of. Louise, I should 
be very sorry if I thought you were at all — in love 
with that young man ! ” 

It seemed a question ; Louise let her head droop, 
and answered .with another. “ How sliould I know? 
He hasn’t asked me.” 

This vexed her mother. “ Don’t be trivial, don’t 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


385 


be childish, my dear. You don’t need to be asked, 
though I’m exceedingly glad he hasn't asked you, for 
now you can get away with a good conscience.” 

‘‘ I’m not sure yet that I want to get away,” said 
the girl, dreamily. 

“ Yes, you are, my dear ! ” her mother retorted. 
‘‘ You know it wouldn’t do at all. It isn’t a question 
of his poverty ; your father has money enough : it’s a 
question of his social quality, and of all those little 
nothings that make up the whole of happiness in mar- 
riage. He would be different enough, being merely a 
man ; but being a man born and reared in as different 
a world from yours as if it were another planet — I 
want you to think over all the girls you know — all 
the people you know — and see how many of them 
have married out of their own set, their own circle — 
we might almost say, their own family. There isn’t 
one ! ” 

I’ve not said I wished to marry him, mamma.” 

No. But I wish you to realize just what it would 

be.” 

It would be something rather distinguished, if his 
dreams came true,” Louise suggested. 

Well, of course,” Mrs. Hilary admitted. She 
wished to be very, very reasonable ; very, very just ; 
it was the only thing with a girl like Louise ; perhaps 
with any girl. “ It would be distinguished, in a way. 
But it wouldn’t be distinguished in the society way ; the 
only way you’ve professed to care for. I know that 
we’ve always been an intellectual community, and New- 


386 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Yorkers, and that kind of people, think, or profess to 
think, that we make a great deal of literary men. We 
do invite them somewhat, but I pass whole seasons 
without meeting them; and I don’t know that you 
could say that they are of society, even when they 
are in it. If such a man has society connections, he’s 
in society ; but he’s there on account of his connec- 
tions, not on account of his achievements. This young 
man may become very distinguished, but he’ll always 
be rather queer ; and he would put a society girl at 
odds with society. His distinction would be public ; it 
wouldn’t be social.” 

‘‘Matt doesn’t think society is worth minding,” 
Louise said, casually. 

“But you do,” returned her mother. “And Matt 
says that a man of this young man’s traditions might 
mortify you before society people.” 

“ Did Matt say that ? ” Louise demanded, angrily. 
“ I will speak to Matt about that ! I should like to 
know what he means by it. I should like to hear 
what he would say.” 

“ Very likely he would say that the society people 
were not worth minding. You know his nonsense. If 
you agree with Matt, I’ve nothing more to say, 
Louise ; not a word. You can marry a mechanic 
or a day-laborer, in that case, without loss of self- 
respect. I’ve only been talking to you on the plane 
where I’ve always understood you wished to be 
taken. But if you don’t, then I can’t help it. You 
must understand, though, and understand distinctly, 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


387 


that you can’t live on two levek ; the world won’t let 
you. Either you must be in the world and of it en- 
tirely ; or you must discard its criterion s, and form 
your own, and hover about in a sort of Bohemian 
limbo on its outskirts ; or you must give it up al- 
together.” Mrs. Hilary rose from the lounge where 
she had been sitting, and said, “ Now I’m going to bed. 
And I want you to think this all carefully over, 
Louise. I don’t blame you for it : and I wish nothing 
but your good and happiness — yours and Matt’s, both. 
But I must say you’ve been pretty difficult children to 
provide for. Do you know what Matt has been 
doing ? ” Mrs. Hilary had not meant to speak of it, 
but she felt an invincible necessity of doing so, at last. 

‘‘ Something new about the Northwicks ? ” 

“Very decidedly — or about one of them. He’s 
offered himself to Suzette.” 

“ How grand ! How perfectly magnificent ! Then 
she can give up her property at once, and Matt can 
take care of her and Adeline both.” 

‘‘ Or, your father can, for him. Matt has not the 
crime of being a capitalist on his conscience. His idea 
seems to be to get Suzette to live here on the farm 
with him.” 

“ I don’t believe she’d be satisfied with that,” said 
Louise. “ But could she bear to face the world ? 
Wouldn’t she always be thinking what people 
thought?” 

I felt that I ought to suggest that to Matt ; though, 
really, when it comes to the practical side of the mat- 


388 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


ter, people wouldn’t care much what her father had 
been — that is, society people wouldn’t, as society 
people. She would have the education and the tradi- 
tions of a lady, and she would have Matt’s name. It’s 
nonsense to suppose there wouldn’t be talk ; but I 
don’t believe there would be anything that couldn’t be 
lived down The fact is,” said Mrs. Hilary, giving 
her daughter the advantage of a species of soliloquy, 

I think we ought to be glad Matt has let us off so 
easily. I’ve been afraid that he would end by marry- 
ing some farmer’s daughter, and bringing somebody 
into the family who would say ‘ Want to know,’ and 
‘ How ? ’ and ‘ What-say ? ’ through her nose. Su- 
zette is indefinitely better than that, no matter what her 
father is. But I must confess that it was a shock 
when Matt told me they were engaged.” 

Why, were you surprised, mamma ? ” said Louise. 

I thought all along that it would come to that. I 
knew in the first place, Matt’s sympathy would be 
roused, and you know that’s the strongest thing in 
him. And then, Suzette is a beautiful girl. She’s 
perfectly regal ; and she’s just Matt’s opposite, every 
way ; and, of course he would be taken with her. I’m 
not a hit surprised. Why it’s the most natural thing 
in the world.” 

‘‘It might be very much worse,” sighed Mrs. Hil- 
ary. “As soon as he has seen your father, we must 
announce it, and face it out with people. Fortunately, 
it’s summer ; and a great many have gone abroad this 
year.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


389 


Louise began to laugh. “ Even Mr. North wick is 
abroad.’’ 

“Yes, and I hope he’ll stay there,” said Mrs. Hil- 
ary, wincing. 

“ It would be quite like Matt, wouldn’t it, to have 
him brought home in chains, long enough to give away 
the bride ? ” 

“ Louise ! ” said her mother. 

Louise began to cry. “ Oh, you think it’s nothing,” 
she said stormily, “ for Matt to marry a girl whose 
father ran away with other people’s money ; but a 
man who has fought his way honestly is disgraceful, 
no matter how gifted he is, because he hasn’t the tra- 
ditions of a society man — ” 

“I won’t condescend to answer your unjust non- 
sense, my dear,” said Mrs. Hilary. “ I will merely 
ask you if you wish to marry Mr. Maxwell — ” 

“ I will take care of myself ! ” cried the girl, in 
open, if not definite rebellion. She flung from the 
room, and ran upstairs to her chamber, which looked 
across at the chamber where Maxwell’s light was 
burning. She dropped on her knees beside the win- 
dow, and bowed herself to the light, that swam on her 
tears, a golden mist, and pitied and entreated it, and 
remained there, till the lamp was suddenly quenched, 
and the moon possessed itself of the night in unbroken 
splendor. 

After breakfast, which she made late the next 
morning, she found Maxwell waiting for her on the 
piazza. 


390 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Are you going over to the camp ? ” she asked. 

I was, after I had said good-by,’’ he answered. 

Oh, we’re not going for several hours yet. We 
shall take the noon train, mamma’s decided.” She 
possessed herself of the cushion, stuffed with spruce 
sprays, that lay on the piazza-steps, and added, “ I 
will go over with you.” They had hitherto made 
some pretence, one to the other, for being together 
at the camp ; but this morning neither feigned any 
reason for it. Louise stopped, when she found he 
was not keeping up with her, and turned to him, 
and waited for him to reach her. “ I wanted to speak 
with you, Mr. Maxwell, and I expect you to be very 
patient and tractable.” She said this very authorita- 
tively ; she ended by asking, “ Will you ? ” 

“ It depends upon what it is. I am always docile if 
I like a thing.” 

“ Well, you ought to like this.” 

“ Oh, that’s different. That’s often infuriating.” 

They went on, and then paused at the low stone 
wall between the pasture and the pines. 

‘‘ Before I say it, you must promise to take it in the 
right way,” she said. 

He asked, teasingly, Why do you think I 
won’t ? ” 

‘‘ Because — because I wish you to so much ! ” 

“ And am I such a contrary-minded person that you 
can’t trust me to behave myself, under ordinary prov- 
ocation ? ” 

‘‘ You may think the provocation is extraordinary.” 


THE QUALITY OP MERCY. 


391 


Well, let’s see.” He got himself over the wall, 
and allowed her to scramble after him. 

She asked herself whether, if he had the traditions 
of a society man, he would have done that ; but some^ 
how, when she looked at his dreamy face, rapt in 
remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not 
care for his neglect of small attentions. She said 
to herself that if a woman could be the companion of 
his thoughts that would be enough; she did not go 
into the details of arranging association with thoughts 
so far off as Maxwell’s; she did not ask herself 
whether it would be easy or possible. She put the 
cushion into the hammock for a pillow, but he chose 
to sit beside her on the bench between the pine-tree 
boles, and the hammock swayed empty in the light 
breeze that woke the sea-song of the boughs over 
them. 

‘‘ I don’t know exactly how to begin,” she said, 
after a little silence. 

‘‘ If you’ll tell me what you want to say,” he sug- 
gested, ‘‘ I’ll begin for you.” 

“ No, thank you, I’ll begin myself. Do you remem- 
ber, the other day, when we were here, and were talk- 
ing of the difference in peoples’ pride ? ” 

“ Purse pride and poverty pride ? Yes, I remember 
that.” 

I didn’t like what you said, then ; or, rather, what 
you were.” 

“ Have you begun now ? Why didn’t you ? ” 
Because — because you seemed very worldly.” 

R* 


392 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ And do you object to the world ? I didn’t make 
it,” said Maxwell, with his scornful smile. “ But I’ve 
no criticisms of the Creator to offer. I take the world 
as 1 find it, and as soon as I get a little stronger, I’m 
going back to it. But I thought you were rather 
worldly yourself. Miss Hilary.” 

I don’t know. I don’t believe I am, very. Don’t 
you think the kind of life Matt’s trying to live is 
better?” 

Your brother is the best man I ever knew — ” 

‘‘ Oh, isn’t he ? Magnificent ! ” 

‘‘ But life means business. Even literary life, as I 
understand it, means business.” 

“ And can’t you think — can’t you wish — for any- 
thing better than the life that means business ? ” she 
asked, she almost entreated. “ Why should you ever 
wish to go back to the world ? If you could live in 
the country away from society, and all its vanity and 
vexation of spirit, why wouldn’t you rather lead a 
literary life that didn’t mean business?” 

‘‘ But how ? Are you proposing a public subscrip- 
tion, or a fairy godmother ? ” asked Maxwell. 

No ; merely the golden age. I’m just supposing 
the case,” said Louise. “You were born in Arcady, 
you know,” she added, with a wistful smile. 

“Arcady is a good place to emigrate from,” said 
Maxwell, with a smile that was not wistful. “ It’s 
like Vermont, where I was born, too. And if I owned 
the whole of Arcady, I should have no use for it till I 
had seen what the world had to offer. Then I might 
like it for a few months in the summer.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


393 


Yes,” she sighed faintly, and suddenly she rose, and 
said, I must go and put the finishing touches. Good- 
by, Mr. Maxwell ” — she mechanically gave him her 
hand. I hope you will soon be well enough to get 
back to the world again.” 

Thank you,” he said, in surprise. “ But the great 
trial you were going to make of my patience, my 
docility — ” 

She caught away her hand. ‘‘ Oh, that wasn’t any- 
thing. I’ve decided not. Good-by ! Don’t go through 
the empty form of coming back to the house with me. 
I’ll take your adieus to mamma.” She put the cush- 
ion into the hammock. ‘‘ You had better stay and try 
to get a nap, and gather strength for the battle of life 
as fast as you can.” 

She spoke so gayly and lightly, that Maxwell, with 
all his subtlety, felt no other mood in her. He did not 
even notice, till afterwards, that she had said nothing 
about their meeting again. He got into the hammock, 
and after a while he drowsed, with a delicious, poetic 
sense of her capricious charm, as she drifted back to 
the farm-house, over the sloping meadow. He vis- 
ioned a future in which fame had given him courage 
to tell her his love. 

Mrs. Hilary knew from her daughter’s face that 
something had happened ; but she knew also that it 
was not what she dreaded. 


PART THIRD. 


I. 

Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the 
truth of his hopes and possibilities concerning North- 
wick. He found that the reporter really expected to 
do little more than to find his man, and make a news- 
paper sensation out of his discovery. He was willing 
to forego this in the interest of Northwick’s family, if 
it could be made worth his while ; he said he had 
always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney 
had, and he would be glad to be of use to them. He 
was so far from conceiving that his account of the de- 
falcation in the Events could have been displeasing to 
them, that he bore them none of an offender’s malice. 
He referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, 
and he promptly agreed with Matt as to the terms of 
his visit to Canada, and its object. 

It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he 
had written to Maxwell, there had been a change in 
his plans and expectations. Pinney was disappointed 
in the Events' people ; they had not seen his proposed 
excursion as he had ; the failure of Northwick’s letter, 
as an enterprise, had dashed their interest in him ; and 
they did not care to invest in Pinney’s scheme, even 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


395 


SO far as to guarantee his expenses. This disgusted 
Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward an- 
other calling. It was not altogether strange to him ; 
he had already done some minor pieces of amateur 
detective work, and acquitted himself with gratifying 
success ; and he had lately seen a private detective, 
who attested his appreciation of Pkiney’s skill by 
offering him a partnership. His wife was not in favor 
of his undertaking the work, though she could not deny 
that he had some distinct qualification for it. The air 
of confidence which he diffused about him uncon- 
sciously, and which often served him so well in news- 
paper life, was in itself the most valuable property 
that a detective could have. She said this, and she 
did not object to the profession itself, except for the 
dangers that she believed it involved. She did not 
wish Pinney to incur these, and she would not be 
laughed out of her fears when he told her that there 
were lines of detective work that were not half so 
dangerous, in the long run, as that of a reporter sub- 
ject to assignment. She only answered that she would 
much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But 
this offer to look up North wick in behalf of his family, 
was a different affair. That would give them a chance 
for their outing in Canada, and pay them better than 
any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and 
upon how much good it would do the baby, and they 
imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay quietly at 
Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his 
man, if that was necessary. 


396 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


And then,” he said, “ if I find him, and all goes 
well, and I can get him to come home with me by 
moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both sides. 
There’s a reward out for him ; and I guess I will just 
qualify as a detective before we start, so as to be pre- 
pared for emergencies — ” 

“ Lorenzo Pinney ! ” screamed his wife. “ Don’t 
you think of such a wicked thing! So dishonorable I ” 
“ How wicked ? How dishonorable ? ” demanded 
Pinney. 

“ I’m ashamed to have to tell you, if you don’t see ; 
and I wonH. But if you go as a detective, go as a de- 
tective ; and if you go as their friend, to help them 
and serve them, then go that way. But don’t you try 
to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won’t 
stir a step with you ; so there ! ” 

‘‘ Ah ! ” said Pinney, “ I understand. I didn’t catch 
on, at first. Well, you needn’t be afraid of my mix- 
ing drinks. I’ll just use the old fellow for practice. 
Very likely he may lead to something else in the 
defaulter line. You won’t object to that ? ” 

‘‘No; I won’t object to that.” 

They had the light preparations of young house- 
keepers to make, and they were off to the field of 
Pinney’s work in a very few days after he had seen 
Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his 
wife. At Quebec he found board for his family at the 
same hotel where Northwick had stopped in the winter, 
but it had kept no recognizable trace of him in the 
name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


397 


week of search in the city, where he had to carry on 
his investigations with an eye not only to Northwick’s 
discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he could 
find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, 
and he went about his work in the journalistic rather 
than the legal way. He had not wholly “ severed his 
connection,” as the newspaper phrase is, with the 
Events. He had a fast and loose relation with it, 
pending a closer tie with his friend, the detective, 
which authorized him to keep its name on his card ; 
and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the 
local press. They did not understand, in their old- 
fashioned, quiet ideal of newspaper work, the vigor 
with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the leisure of 
his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material 
relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. 
But they had a sort of local pride in their presence, 
and with their help Pinney came to know all that was 
to be known of them. The colony was not large, but 
it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens 
were very well aware of. There are defaulters and 
defaulters, and the blame is not in all cases the same, 
nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned 
that there were defaulters who were in society, and 
not merely because they were defaulters for large 
sums and were of good social standing at home, but 
because there were circumstances that attenuated their 
offence in the eyes of the people of their city of 
refuge ; they judged them by their known intentions 
and their exigencies, as the justice they had fled from 


398 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


could not judge them. There were other defaulters of 
a different type and condition, whose status followed 
them : embezzlers who had deliberately planned their 
misdeeds, and who had fallen from no domestic dignity 
in their exclusion from respectable association abroad. 
These Pinney saw in their walks about the town ; and 
he was not too proud, for the purposes of art, to make 
their acquaintance, and to study in their vacancy and 
solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They 
did not consort together, but held aloof from one an- 
other, and professed to be ignorant each of the affairs 
of the rest. Pinney sympathized in tone if not in 
sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the 
confidence he so often enjoyed ; they proved to be 
men of reticent temper ; when frankly invited to speak 
of their history and their hopes in the interest of the 
reputations they had left behind them, they said they 
had no statement to make. 

It was not from them that Pinney could hope to 
learn anything of the man he was seeking ; Northwick 
was not of their order, morally or socially, and from 
the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles 
moved, Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of 
his life and by the choice of the people who formed 
those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather comical, 
and it might have led him to say some satirical things 
of the local society, if it had been in him to say bitter 
things at all. As it was, it amused his inexhaustible 
amiability that an honest man like himself should not 
be admitted to the company of even the swellest de- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


399 


faulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted 
that it should be so, mainly because Northwick could 
have been heard of among them, if at all ; and when 
all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he 
did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to 
find him there, but he had begun his search at that 
point, because he must stop there on his way to Rim- 
ouski, where Northwick’s letter to the Events was 
posted. This postmark was the only real clue he had ; 
but he left no stone unturned at Quebec, lest North- 
wick should be under it. By the time he came to the 
end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were 
on such friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel 
where they were staying, that Pinney felt as easy at 
parting from them as he could ever hope to feel. His 
soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving 
them behind ; but he did not think it well to take 
them with him, not knowing what Rimouski might be 
like, or how long he might be kept remote from an 
English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He 
got a passage down the river on one of the steamers 
for Liverpool ; and with many vows, in compliance 
with his wife’s charges, that he would not let the ves- 
sel by any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent 
himself away. She wagged the baby’s hand at him 
from the window where she stood to watch him getting 
into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in 
his tears, as the calash dashed wildly down Mountain 
Hill Street, and whirled him through the Lower Town 
on to the steamer’s landino:. He went to his state- 

o 

26 


400 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


room as soon as he got aboard, that he might give free 
course to his heartache, and form resolutions to be 
morally worthy of getting back alive to them, and of 
finding them well. He would, if he could, have given 
up his whole enterprise ; and he was only supported 
in it by remembering what she had said in praise of 
its object. She had said that if he could be the means 
of finding their father for those two poor women, she 
should think it the greatest thing that ever was ; and 
more to be glad of than if he could restore him to 
his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish 
view of it ; he had said that in either case it would be 
business, and nothing else ; but now his heart warmed 
with acceptance of it as the only right view. He 
pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the 
Providence that was to bring them all together again, 
alive and well ; good as he had felt himself to be, 
when he thought of the love in which he and his wife 
were bound, he had never experienced so deep and 
thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He 
must succeed, if only to crown so meritorious a mar- 
riage with the glory of success and found it in lasting 
prosperity. 


II. 


These emotions still filled Finney to the throat 
when at last he left his cabin and went forward to 
the smoking-room, where he found a number of vet- 
eran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards 
which they had already drawn against the tedium of 
the ocean passage. Some were not playing, but 
merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, 
.pale straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of 
these the principal speaker seemed to be an Ameri- 
can ; the two men who chorussed him were Cana- 
dians; they laughed and applauded with enjoyment 
of what was national as well as what was individual 
ill his talk. 

Well, I never saw a man as mad as old Oiseau 
when he told about that fellow, and how he tried to 
start him out every day to visit his soap-mine in the 
’ill, as he called it, and how the fellow would slip out 
of it, day after day, week after week, till at last 
Oiseau got tired, and gave him the bounce when the 
first boat came up in the spring. He tried to make 
him believe it would be good for his health, to go out 
prospecting with him, let alone making his everlast- 
ing fortune ; but it was no good ; and all the time 
Oiseau was afraid he would fall into my hands and 


402 


THK QUALITY OF MERCY. 


invest with me. ‘ I make you a present of ’im, Mr. 
Markham,’ says he. ‘ I ’ave no more use for him, if 
you find him.’ ” 

One of the Canadians said, I don’t suppose he 
really had anything to invest.” 

“ Why, yes, that was the curious thing about it ; he 
had a belt full of thousand-dollar bills round him. 
They found it when he was sick ; and old Oiseau 
was so afraid that something would happen to him, 
and he would be suspected of it, that he nursed him 
like a brother till he got well, and as soon as he was 
able to get away he bounced him.” 

“And what do you suppose was the matter with 
him, that he wouldn’t even go to look at Oiseau’s 
soap-mine ? ” 

“ Well,” said the American, closing his eyes for the 
better enjoyment of the analysis, and giving a long, 
slow pull at his cigar, “ there might have been any one 
of several things. My idea is that he was a defaulter, 
and the thousand-dollar bills — there were forty or 
fifty of them, Oiseau says — were part of the money 
he got away with. Then, very likely he had no faith 
in Oiseau — knew it was probably a soap-mine, and 
was just putting him off till he could get away him- 
self. Or, maybe his fever left him a little cracked, 
and he didn’t know exactly what he was about. Then, 
again, if my theory of what the man was is true, I 
think that kind of fellow gets a twist simply from 
what he’s done. A good many of them must bring 
money away with them, and there are business 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


403 


openings everywhere; but you never hear of their 
going into anything over here.” 

“ That is odd,” said the Canadian. 

Or would be if it were not so common. It’s the 
rule here, and I don’t know an exception. The de- 
faulter never does anything with his money, except 
live on it. Meigs, who built those railroads on the 
Andes, is the only one who ever showed enterprise ; 
and I never understood that it was a private enter- 
prise with him. Anyway, the American defaulter 
who goes to Canada never makes any effort to grow 
up with the country. He simply rests on his laurels, 
or else employs his little savings to negotiate a safe 
return. No, sir ; there’s something in defalcation that 
saps a man’s business energies, and I don’t suppose 
that old fellow would have been able to invest in 
Oiseau’s gold mine if it had opened at his feet, and 
he could have seen the sovereigns ready coined in it. 
He just couldn't, I can understand that state of mind, 
though I don’t pretend to respect it. I can imagine 
just how the man trembled to go into some specula- 
tion, and didn’t dare to. Must have been an old 
hand at it, too. But it seems as if the money he 
steals becomes sacred to a man when he gets away 
with it, and he can’t risk it.” 

“ I rather think you could have overcome his scru- 
ples, Markham, if you could have got at him,” said 
the Canadian. 

“ Perhaps,” Markham assented. But I guess I 
can do better with our stock in England.” 


404 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Pinney Kad let liis cigar go out, in his excitement. 
He asked Markham for a light, though there were 
plenty of matches, and Markham accepted the request 
as an overture to his acquaintance. 

‘‘ Brother Yank ? he suggested. 

Boston.” 

“ Going over ? ” 

Only to Rimouski. You don’t happen to know 
the name of that defaulter, do you ? ” 

“ No ; I don’t,” said Markham. 

I had an idea I knew who it was,” said Pinney. 

Markham looked sharply at him. ‘‘ After some- 
body in Rimouski ? ” 

“ Well, not just in that sense, exactly, if you mean 
as a detective. But I’m a newspaper man, and this 
is my holiday, and I’m working up a little article about 
our financiers in exile while I’m resting. My name’s 
Pinney.” 

‘‘ Markham can fill you up with the latest facts,” 
said the Canadian, going out; ‘‘and he’s got a gold 
mine that beats Oiseau’s hollow. But don’t trust him 
too far. I know him ; he’s a partner of mine.” 

“ That accounts for me,” said Markham, with the 
tolerant light of a much-joked joker in his eyes. 
With Pinney alone he ceased to talk the American 
which seemed to please his Canadian friend, and was 
willing soberly to tell all he knew about Oiseau’s cap- 
italist, whom he merely conjectured to be a defaulter. 
He said the man called himself Warwick, and pro- 
fessed to be from Chicago ; and then Pinney recalled 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


405 


the name and address in the register of h*is Quebec 
hotel, and the date, which was about that of North- 
wick’s escape. But I never dreamt of his using half 
of his real name,” and he told Markham what the real 
name was ; and then he thought it safe to trust him 
with the nature of his special mission concerning 
North wick. 

“ Is there any place on board where a man could 
go and kick himself ? ” he asked. 

‘‘ Do it here as well as anywhere,” said Markham, 
breaking his cigar-ash off. But Finney’s alluring con- 
fidence, and his simple-hearted acknowledgment of 
his lack of perspicacity had told upon him ; he felt the 
fascinating need of helping Finney, which Finney was 
able to inspire in those who respected him least, and 
he said, There was a priest who knew this man when 
he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish 
now — yes, he has ! I remember Oiseau told me — at 
Rimouski. You’d better look him up.” 

Look him up ! ” said Finney, in a frenzy. “ I’ll 
live with him before I’m in Rimouski twenty seconds.” 

He had no trouble in finding Fere fitienne, but 
after the first hopeful encounter with the sunny sur- 
face sweetness of the young priest, he found him dis- 
posed to be reserved concerning the Mr. Warwick he 
had known at Haha Bay. It became evident that 
Fere fitienne took Finney for a detective ; and how- 
ever willing he might have been to save a soul for 
Faradise in the person of the man whose unhappiness 
he had witnessed, he was clearly not eager to help 
hunt a fugitive down for State’s prison. 


406 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Even when Finney declared his true character and 
mission, the priest’s caution exacted all the proofs he 
could give, and made him submit his authorization to 
an English-speaking notary of the priest’s acquaint- 
ance. Then he owned that he had seen Mr. Warwick 
since their parting at Haha Bay ; Mr. Warwick had 
followed him to Rimouski, after several weeks, and 
Fere fStienne knew where he was then living. But 
he was still so anxious to respect the secrecy of a man 
who had trusted him as far as Northwick had, that it 
required all the logic and all the learning of the notary 
to convince him that Mr. Warwick, if he were the 
largest defaulter ever self-banished, was in no danger 
of extradition at Finney’s hands. It was with mafiy 
injunctions, and upon many promises, that at last he 
told Finney where Mr. Warwick was living, and fur- 
nished him with a letter which was at once warrant 
and warning to the exile. 

Finney took the first train back toward Quebec ; he 
left it at St. Andre, and crossed the St. Lawrence to 
Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in finding the little 
hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged. But Finney’s 
spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become 
sensitized toward the defaulter through the scrupulous 
regard for him shown by Fere fitienne no less than 
by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to him 
in virtue of his children’s authorization. So his heart 
smote him at the ghastly look he got, when he ad- 
vanced upon Warwick, where he sat at the inn-door, 
in the morning sun, and cheerily addressed him, ‘‘ Mr. 
Northwick, I believe.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


407 


It was the first time Nortliwick had heard his real 
name spoken since Putney had threatened him in the 
station, the dark February morning when he fled from 
home. The name he had worn for the last five months 
was suddenly no part of him, though till that moment 
it had seemed as much so as the white beard which he 
had suffered to hide his face. 

“ I don’t expect you to answer me,” said Pinney, 
feeling the need of taking, as well as giving time, 
till you’ve looked at this letter, and of course I’ve 
no wish to hurry you. If I’m mistaken, and it isn’t 
Mr. Nortliwick, you won’t open the letter.” 

He handed him, not the letter which Pere fitienne 
had given him, but the letter Suzette Nortliwick had 
written her father ; and Pinney saw that he recog- 
nized the hand-writing of the superscription. He saw 
the letter tremble in the old man’s hand, and heard 
its crisp rustle as he clutched it to keep it from fall- 
ing to the ground. He could not bear the sight of 
the longing and the fears that came into his face. ‘‘ No 
hurry ; no hurry,” he said, kindly, and turned away. 

S 


III. 


When Piimey came back from the little turn he 
took, Northwick was still holding the unopened letter 
in his hand. He stood looking at it in a kind of daze, 
and he was pale, and seemed faint. 

Why, Mr. Northwick,’’ said Pinney, why don’t 
you read your letter ? If it hadn’t been yours, don’t 
I know that you’d have given it back to me at once ? ” 
‘^It isn’t that,” said the man, who was so mucli 
older and frailer than Pinney had expected to find 
him. But — are they well ? Is it — bad news ? ” 

“ No !” Pinney exulted. “They’re first-rate. You 
needn’t be afraid to read the letter ! ” Pinney ’s exul- 
tation came partly from his certainty that it was really 
Northwick, and partly from the pleasure he felt in 
reassuring him ; he sympathized with him as a father. 
His pleasure was not marred by the fact that he knew 
nothing of the state of Northwick’s family, and built 
Ids assertion upon the probability that the letter would 
contain nothing to alarm or afflict him. “ Like a glass 
of water ? ” he suggested, seeing Northwick sit inert 
and helpless on the steps of the inn-porch, appar- 
ently without the force to break the seal of the letter. 
“ Or a little brandy ? ” Pinney handed him the neat 
leather-covered flask his wife had reproached him for 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


409 


buying when they came away from home ; she said he 
could not afford it; but he was glad he had got it, 
now, and he unscrewed the stopple with pride in 
handing it to Northwick. ‘‘ You look sick.” 

“ I haven’t been very well,” Northwick admitted, 
and he touched the bottle with his lips. It revived 
him, and Pinney now saw that if he would leave him 
again, he would open the letter. There was little in 
it but the tender assurance Suzette gave him of their 
love, and the anxiety of Adeline and herself to know 
how and wdiere he was. She told him that he was 
not to feel troubled about them ; that they were well, 
and unhappy only for him ; but he must not think 
they blamed him, or had ever done so. As soon as 
they were sure they could reach him, she said, they 
would write to him again. Adeline wrote a few lines 
with her name, to say that for some days past she 
had not been quite well ; but that she was better 
and had nothing to wish for but to hear from him. 

When Pinney came back a second time, he found 
Northwick with the letter open in his hand. 

Well, sir,” he said, with the easy respectfulness 
toward Northwick that had been replacing, ever since 
he talked with Matt Hilary, the hail-fellow manner he 
used with most men, and that had now fully estab- 
lished itself, “ You’ve got some noble scenery about 
here.” He meant to compliment Northwick on the 
beauty of the landscape, as people ascribe merit to the 
inhabitants of a flourishing city. 

Northwick, by his silence, neither accepted nor dis. 


410 


thp: quality of mercy. 


claimed the credit of the local picturesqueness ; and 
Pinnej ventured to add, But you seem to take it 
out in nature, Mr. Northwick. The place is pretty 
quiet, sir.'’ 

Northwick paid no heed to this observation, either ; 
but after sitting mute so long that Pinney began to 
doubt whether he was ever going to speak at all, he 
began to ask some guarded and chary questions as to 
how Pinney had happened to find him. Pinney had 
no unwillingness to tell, and now he gave him the 
letter of Pere Etienne, with a eulogy of the priest’s 
regard for Northwick’s interest and safety. He told 
him how Markham’s talk had caught his attention, 
and Northwick tacitly recognized the speculator. But 
when Pinney explained that it was the postmark on 
his letter to the Events that gave him the notion of 
going to Rimouski, he could see that Northwick was 
curious to know the effect of that letter with the pub- 
lic. At first he thought he would let him ask ; but he 
perceived that this would be impossible for Northwick, 
and he decided to say, ‘‘ That letter was a great sen- 
sation, Mr. Northwick.” The satisfaction that lighted 
up Northwick’s eyes caused Pinney to add, I guess 
it set a good many people thinking about you in a dif- 
ferent way. It showed that there was something to 
be said on both sides, and 1 believe it made friends for 
you, sir. Yes, sir.” Pinney had never believed this 
till the moment he spoke, but then it seemed so prob- 
able he had that he easily affirmed it. I don’t be- 
lieve, Mr. Northwick,” he went on, “but what this 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


411 


trouble could be patched up, somehow, so that you 
could come back, if you wanted to, give ’em time to 
think it over a little.*’ 

As soon as he said this, the poison of that ulterior 
purpose which his wife had forbidden him, began to 
work in Pinney’s soul. He could not help feeling 
what a grand thing it would be if he could go back 
with Northwick in his train, and deliver him over, a 
captive of moral suasion, to his country’s courts. 
Whatever the result was, whether the conviction or 
the acquittal of Northwick, the process would be the 
making of Pinney. It would carry him to such a 
height in the esteem of those who knew him, that he 
could choose either career, and whether as a reporter 
or a detective, it would give his future the distinction 
of one of the most brilliant pieces of work in both 
sorts. Pinney tried his best to counteract the influ- 
ence of these ideas by remembering his promises to his 
wife ; but it was difficult to recall his promises with 
accuracy in his wife’s absence ; and he probably owed 
his safety in this matter more to Northwick’s tem- 
perament than to any virtue of his own. 

“ I think I understand how that would be,” said the 
defaulter coldly ; and he began very cautiously to ask 
Pinney the precise effect of his letter as Pinney had 
gathered it from print and hearsay. It was not in 
Pinney’s nature to give any but a rose-colored and 
illusory report of this ; but he felt that Northwick was 
sizing him up while he listened, and knew just when 
and how much he was lying. This heightened Pin- 


412 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


ney’s respect for him, and apparently liis divination of 
Pinney’s character had nothing to do with Northwick’s 
feeling toward him. So far as Pinney could make 
out it was friendly enough, and as their talk went on 
he imagined a growing trustfulness in it. Northwdck 
kept his inferences and conclusions to himself. His 
natural reticence had been intensified by the solitude 
of his exile ; it stopped him short of any expression 
concerning Pinney’s answers ; and Pinney had to con- 
struct Northwick’s opinions from his questions. His 
own cunning was restlessly at work exploring 
Northwick’s motives in each of these, and it was not 
at fault in the belief it brought him that Northwick 
clearly understood the situation at home. He knew 
that the sensation of his offence and flight were past, 
and that so far as any public impulse to punish him 
was concerned, he might safely go back. But he 
knew that the involuntary machinery of the law must 
begin to operate upon him as soon as he came within 
its reach ; and he could not learn from Pinney that 
anything had been done to block its wheels. The let- 
ter from his daughters threw no light upon this point ; 
it was an appeal for some sign of life and love from 
him ; nothing more. They, or the friends who were 
advising them, had not thought it best to tell him 
more than that they were well, and anxious to hear 
from him ; and Pinney really knew nothing more 
about them. He had not been asked to Hatboro’ to 
see them before he started, and with all the will he 
had to invent comfortable and attractive circuni- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


413 


stances for them, he was at a disadvantage for want of 
material. The most that he could conjecture was that 
Mr. Hilary’s family had not broken off their friendly 
relations with them. He had heard old Hilary criti- 
cised for it, and he told North wick so. 

‘‘ I guess he’s been standing by you, Mr. North- 
wick, as far as he consistently could,” he said ; and 
Northwick ventured to reply that he expected that. 
“It was young Hilary who brought me the letter, 
and talked the whole tiling up with me,” Pinney 
added. 

Northwick had apparently not expected this ; but 
he let no more than the fact appear. He kept silent 
for a time ; then he said, “ And you don’t know any- 
thing about the way they’re living ? ” 

“ No, I don’t,” said Pinney, with final candor. 
“ But I should say they were living along there about 
as usual. Mr. Hilary didn’t say but what they were. 
I guess you haven’t got any cause to be uneasy on 
that score. My idea is, Mr Northwick, that they 
wanted to leave you just as free as they could about 
themselves. They wanted to find out your where- 
abouts in the land of the living, first of all. You 
know that till that letter of yours came out, there 
were a good many that thought you were killed in 
that accident at Well water, the day you left home.” 

Northwick started. “ What accident ? What do 
you mean ? ” he demanded. 

“ Why, didn’t you know about it? Didn’t you see 
the accounts ? They had a name like yours amongst 


414 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


the missing, and people who thought you were not in 
it, said it was a little job you had put up. There was 
a despatch engaging a Pullman seat signed, T. W. 
North wick — ” 

Ah ! I knew it ! ’’ said Northwick. ‘‘ I knew 
that I must have signed my real name ! ” 

‘‘Well, of course,” said Pinney, soothingly, “a man 
is apt to do that, when he first takes another. It^s 
natural.” 

“ I never heard of the accident. I saw no papers 
for months. I wouldn’t; and then I was sick — 
They must have believed I was dead ! ” 

“ Well, sir,” said Pinney, “ I don't know that that 
follows. My wife and myself talked that up a good 
deal at the time, and we concluded that it was about 
an even thing. You see it’s pretty hard to believe 
that a friend is dead, even when you’ve seen him die ; 
and I don’t understand how people that lose friends 
at a distance can ever quite realize that they’re gone. 
I guess that even if the ladies went upon the theory 
of the accident, there was always a kind of a merciful 
uncertainty about it, and that was my wife’s notion, 
too. But that’s neither here nor there, now, Mr. 
Northwick. Here you are, alive and well, in spite of 
all theories to the contrary — though they must have 
been pretty well exploded by your letter to the Events 
— and the question is what answer are you going to 
let me take back to your family ? You want to send 
some word, don’t you ? My instructions were not to 
urge you at all, and I won’t. But if I was in your 
place, I know what / should do.” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


415 


Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. 
Me fell into a deep silence which it seemed to Pinney 
he would never break ; and his face became such a 
blank that all Finney’s subtlety was at fault. It is 
doubtful, indeed, if there was anything definite or 
directed in the mute misery of Northwick’s soul. It 
was not a sharp anguish, such as a finer soul’s might 
have been, but it was a real misery, of a measure and 
a quality that he had not felt before. Now he real- 
ized how much he must have made his children suffer. 
Perhaps it wrung him the more keenly because it 
seemed to be an expression of the divine displeasure, 
which he flattered himself he had appeased, and was 
a fatal consequence of his guilt. It was a terrible 
suggestion of the possibility that, after all. Providence 
might not have been a party to the understanding be- 
tween them, and that his good-will toward those he had 
wronged had gone for nothing. He had blamed him- 
self for not having tried to retrieve himself and make 
their losses good. It was no small part of his misery 
now to perceive that anything he might have done 
would have gone for nothing in this one-sided under- 
standing. He fetched a long, unconscious sigh. 

“Why, it’s all over, now, Mr. Northwick,” said 
Pinney, with a certain amusement at the simple- 
heartedness of this sigh, whose cause he did not mis- 
interpret. “ The question is now about your getting 
back to them.” 

“ Getting back ? You know I can’t go back,” said 
Northwick, with bitter despair, and an openness that 

he had not shown before. 

27 


416 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Far beneath and within the senses that apprehend 
the obvious things, Finney felt the uiiliappy man be- 
ginning to cling to him. He returned, joyously, ‘‘ I 
don’t know about that. Now, see here, Mr. North- 
wick, you believe that I’m here as your friend, don’t 
you ? That I want to deal in good faith with you ? ” 
Northwick hesitated, and Finney pursued, “ Your 
daughter’s letter ought to be a guaranty of that ! ” 

“Yes,” Northwick admitted, after another hesita- 
tion. 

“ Well, then, what I’m going to say is in your in- 
terest, and you've got to believe that I have some 
authority for saying it. I can’t tell you just how 
much, for I don’t know as I know myself exactly. 
But 1 think you can get back if you work it right. 
Of course, you can’t get back for nothing. It’s going 
to cost you something. It’s going to cost you all 
you’ve brought with you,” — Finney watched North- 
wick’s impassive face for the next change that should 
pass upon it ; he caught it, and added — “ and more. 
But I happen to know that the balance will be forth 
coming when it’s needed. I can’t say hoio I know it, 
for I don’t exactly know how I know it. But I do know 
it; and you know that it’s for you to take the first 
step. You ihust say how much money you brought 
with you, and where it is, and how it can be got at. I 
should think,’' said Finney, with a drop in his earnest- 
ness, and as if the notion had just occurred to him, 
“ you would want to see that place of yours again.” 

Northwick gave a gasp in the anguish of homesick- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


417 


ness the words brouglit upon him. In a flash of what 
was like a limiinous pang, he saw it all as it looked 
the night he left it in the white landscape under the 
high, bare wintry sky. You don’t know what you’re 
talking about,” he said, with a kind of severity. 

‘‘ No,” Pinney admitted, I don’t suppose any one 
can begin to appreciate it as you do. But I was there, 
just after you skipped — ” 

“ Then I was the kind of man who would skip,” 
North wick swiftly reflected — 

And I must say I would take almost any chance 
of getting back to a place like that. Why,” he said, 
with an easy, caressing cordiality, ^^you can’t have 
any idea how completely the thing’s blown over. Why, 
sir, 141 bet you could go back to Hatboro’ now, and be 
there twenty-four hours before anybody would wake 
up enough to make trouble for you. Mind, I don’t 
say that’s what we want you to do. We couldn’t make 
terms for you half as well, with you on the ground. 
We want you to keep your distance for the present, 
and let your friends work for you. Like a candidate 
for the presidency,” Pinney added, with a smile. 
Hello I Who’s this ? ” 

A little French maid, barefooted, black-eyed, curly- 
headed, shyly approached Northwick, and said, “ Diner, 
Monsieur.” 

“ That means dinner,” Northwick gravely inter- 
preted. “ I will ask you to join me.” 

“ Oh, thank you, I shall be very glad,” said Pinney 
rising with him. They had been sitting on the steps 


418 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY- 


of a structure that Pinney now noticed was an oddity 
among the bark-sheathed cabins of the little hamlet. 
“ Why, what’s this ? ” 

‘‘ It’s the studio of an American painter who used to 
come here. He hasn’t been here for several years.” 

“ I suppose you expect to light out if he comes,” 
Pinney suggested, in the spirit of good fellowship 
towards Northwick now thoroughly established in 
him. 

“ He couldn’t do me any harm, if he wanted to,” 
answered Northwick, with unresentful dignity. 

“ No,” Pinney readily acquiesced, “ and I presume 
you’d be glad to hear a little English, after all the 
French you have around.” 

‘‘ The landlord speaks a little ; and the priest. He 
is a friend of Father fitienne.” 

“ Oh, I see,” said Pinney. He noticed that North- 
wick walked slowly and weakly ; he ventured to put 
his hand under his elbow, and Northwick did not 
resent the help offered him. 

“ I had a very severe sickness during the latter part 
of the winter,” he explained, ‘‘ and it pulled me down 
a good deal.” 

‘‘ At Rimouski, I presume ? ” said Pinney. 

“ No,” said Northwick, briefly. 


IV. 


Over the simple dinner, which Pinney praised for 
the delicacy of the local lamb, and North wick ate of so 
sparingly. North wick talked more freely. He told 
Pinney all about his flight, and his winter journey 
up toward the northern verge of the civilized world. 
The picturesque details of this narrative, and their 
capability of distribution under attractive catch-heads 
almost maddened the reporter’s soul in Pinney with 
longing to make newspaper material of Northwick on 
the spot. But he took his honor in both hands, and 
held fast to it ; only he promised him that if the time 
ever came when that story could be told, it should be 
both fortune and fame to him. 

They sat long over their dinner. At last Pinney 
pulled out his watch. “ What time did you say the 
boat for Quebec got along here ? ” 

Northwick had not said, of course, but he now told 
Pinney. He knew the time well in the homesickness 
which mounted to a paroxysm as that hour each day 
came and went. 

“ We must get there some time in the night then,” 
said Pinne}^ still looking at his watch. “ Then let’s 
understand each other about this : Am I to tell your 
family where you are ? Or what ? Look here ! ” he 


420 


TIIK QUALITY OF MERCY. 


broke off suddenly, ‘‘ why don’t you come up to Quebec 
with me ? You’ll be just as safe there as you are here ; 
you know that ; and now that your whereabouts are 
bound to be known to your friends, you might as well 
be where they can get at you by telegraph in case of 
emergency. Come ! What do you say ? ” 

Northwick said simply, “ Yes, I will go with you.” 

“Well, now you’re shouting,” said Pinney. “Can’t 
I help you to put your traps together ? I want to in- 
troduce you to my wife. She takes as much interest 
in this thing as I do ; and she’ll know how to look 
after you a great deal better, — get you to Quebec once. 
She’s the greatest little nurse in this world ; and, as 
you say, you don’t seem over and above strong. I hope 
you don’t object to children. We’ve got a baby, but 
it’s the best baby ! I’ve heard that child cry just once 
since it was born, and that was when it first realized 
that it was in this vale of tears ; I believe we all do 
that ; but our baby finished up the whole crying-busi- 
ness on that occasion.” 

With Pinney these statements led to others until 
he had possessed Northwick of his whole autobiogra- 
phy. He was in high content with himself, and his 
joy overflowed in all manner of affectionate services to 
Northwick, which Northwick accepted as the mourner 
entrusts his helplessness to the ghastly kindness of the 
undertaker, and finds in it a sort of human sympathy. 
If Northwick had been his own father, Pinney could 
not have looked after him with tenderer care, in 
putting his things together for him, and getting on 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


421 


board the boat, and making interest with the clerk 
for the best stateroom. He did not hesitate to de- 
scribe him as an American financier ; he enjoyed say- 
ing that he was in Canada for his health ; and that he 
must have an extra room. The clerk gave up the 
captain’s, as all the others were taken, and Pinney 
occupied it with North wick. It was larger and 
pleasanter than the other rooms, and after Pinney got 
Northwick to bed, he sat beside him and talked. 
Northwick said that he slept badly, and liked to have 
Pinney talk ; Pinney could see that he was uneasy 
when he left the room, and glad when he got back ; 
he made up his mind that Northwick was somehow a 
very sick man. He lay quite motionless in the lower 
berth, where Pinney made him comfortable; his 
hands were folded on his breast, and his eyes were 
closed. Sometimes Pinney, as he talked on, thought 
the man was dead ; and there were times when he 
invented questions that Northwick had to answer yes 
or no, before he felt sure that he was still alive ; his 
breath went and came so softly Pinney could not 
hear it. 

Pinney told him all about his courtship and married 
life, and what a prize he had drawn in Mrs. Pinney. 
He said she had been the making of him, and if he 
ever did amount to anything, he should owe it to her. 
They had their eye on a little place out of town, out 
Wollaston way, and Pinney was going to try to get 
hold of it. He was tired of being mewed up in a flat, 
and he wanted the baby to get its feet on the ground, 


422 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


when it began to walk. He wanted to make his rent 
pay part of his purchase. He considered that it was 
every man’s duty to provide a permanent home for his 
family, as soon as he began to have a family ; and he 
asked Northwick if he did not think a permanent 
home was the thing. 

Northwick said he thought it was, and after he 
said that, he sighed so deeply that Pinney said, “ Oh, 
I beg your pardon.” He had, in fact, lost the sense 
of Northwick’s situation, and now he recurred to it 
with a fresh impulse of compassion. If his compassion 
was mixed with interest, with business, as he would 
have said, it was none the less a genuine emotion, and 
Pinney was sincere enough in saying he wished it 
could be fixed so that Northwick could get back to 
his home ; at his time of life he needed it. 

“And I don’t believe but what it could be fixed,” 
he said. “ I don’t know much about the points of the 
case ; but I should say that with the friends you’ve 
got, you wouldn’t have a great deal of trouble. I 
presume there are some legal forms you would have 
to go through with; but those things can always be 
appealed and continued and nolle prossed, and all that, 
till there isn’t anything of them, in the end. Of 
course, it would have been different if they could have 
got hold of you in the beginning. But now,” said 
Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, 
“ the whole thing has blown over, so that that letter 
of yours from Rimouski hardly started a ripple in 
Boston ; I can’t say how it was in Hatboro’. No, 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


423 


sir, I don’t believe that if you went back now, and 
your friends stood by you as they ought to, — 1 don’t 
believe you’d get more than a mere nominal sentence, 
if you got that.” 

Northwick made no reply, but Pinney fancied that 
his words were having weight with him, and he went 
on : “ I don’t know whether you’ve ever kept the run 
of these kind of things ; but a friend of mine has, and 
he says there isn’t one case in ten where the law car- 
ries straight. You see, public feeling has got a good 
deal to do with it, and when the people get to feeling 
that a man has suffered enough, the courts are not go- 
ing to be hard on him. No, sir. I’ve seen it time 
and again, in my newspaper experience. The public 
respects a man’s sufferings, and if public opinion can’t 
work the courts, it can work the Governor’s councd. 
Fact is, I looked into that business of yours a little, 
after you left, Mr. Northwick, and I couldn’t see, ex* 
actly, why you didn’t stay, and try to fix it up with 
the company. I believe you could have done it, and 
that was the impression of a good many other news- 
paper men ; and they’re pretty good judges ; they’ve 
seen a lot of life. It’s exciting, and it’s pleasant, 
newspaper work is,” said Pinney, straying back again 
into the paths of autobiography, “ but I’ve got about 
enough of it, myself. The worst of it is, there ain’t 
any outcome to it. The chances of promotion are 
about as good as they are in the U* S. Army when the 
Reservations are quiet. So I’m going into something 
else. I’d like to tell you about it, if you ain’t too 
sleepy ? ” 


424 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


I am rather tired,” said Northwick, with affecting 
patience. 

“ Oh, well, then, I guess we’ll postpone it till to- 
morrow. It’ll keep. My ! It don’t seem as I wasi 
going back to my wife and baby. It seems too good 
to be true. Every time I leave ’em, I just bet my- 
self I sha’n’t get back alive ; or if I do that I sha’n’t 
find ’em safe and sound ; and I’m just as sure I’ll 
win every time, as if I’d never lost the bet yet.” 

Pinney undressed rapidly, and before he climbed 
into the berth over Northwick’s, he locked the door, 
and put the key under his pillow. Northwick did not 
seem to notice him, but a feeling of compunction made 
him put the key back in the door. “ I guess I’d bet- 
ter leave it there, after all,” he said. “ It’ll stop a 
key from the outside. Well, sir, good-night,” he 
added to Northwick, and climbed to his berth with a 
light heart. Toward morning he was wakened by a 
groaning from the lower berth, and he found North- 
wick in great pain. He wished to call for help ; but 
Northwick said the pain would pass, and asked him to 
get him some medicine he had in his hand-bag ; and 
when he had taken that he "was easier. But he held 
fast to Finney’s hand, which he had gripped in one of 
his spasms, and he did not loose it till Pinney heard 
him drawing his breath in the long respirations of 
sleep. Then Pinney got back to his berth, and fell 
heavily asleep. 

He knew it was late when he woke. The boat was 
at rest, and must be lying at her landing in Quebec. 


THE QUALITY OF MEUCY. 


425 


He heard the passengers outside hurrying down the 
cabin to go ashore. When he had collected himself, 
and recalled the events of the night, he was almost 
afraid to look down at Northwick lest he should find 
him lying dead in his berth ; when he summoned 
courage to look, he found the berth empty. 

He leaped out upon the floor, and began to throw 
himself into his clothes. He was reassured, for a 
moment, by seeing Northwick’s travelling-bag in the 
corner with his own ; but the hand-bag was gone. He 
rushed out, as soon as he could make himself decent, 
and searched every part of the boat where Northwick 
might probably be ; but he was not to be seen. 

He asked a steward how long the boat had been in ; 
and the steward said since six o’clock. It was then 
eight. 

Northwick was not waiting for Pinney on the wharf, 
and he climbed disconsolately to his hotel in the Up- 
per Town. He bet, as a last resource, that North- 
wick would not be waiting there for him, to give him 
a pleasant surprise, and he won his disastrous wager. 

It did not take his wife so long to understand what 
had happened, as Pinney thought it would. She went 
straight to the heart of the mystery. 

‘‘ Did you say anything about his going back? ” 

“ Why — in a general way,” Pinney admitted, rue- 
fully. 

Then, of course, that made him afraid of you. 
You broke your word, Ren, and it’s served you right.” 

His wife was walking to and fro with the baby in 


426 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


her arms ; and she said it was sick, and she had been 
up all night with it. She told Pinney he had better 
go out and get a doctor. 

It was all as different from the return Pinney had 
planned as it could be. 

‘‘ I believe the old fool is crazy,” he said, and he 
felt that this was putting the mildest possible construc- 
tion upon Northwick’s behavior. 

‘‘ He seems to have known what he was about, 
anyway,” said Mrs. Pinney, coldly. The baby began 
to cry. “ Oh, do go for the doctor ! ” 


V. 


The day was still far from dawning when North- 
wick crept up the silent avenue, in the dark of its firs, 
toward his empty house, and stealthily began to seek 
for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and^ 
waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in 
the risk he ran ; a wild pleasure mixed with the terror 
he felt in being what and where he was. He wanted 
to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety 
of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety 
pierced him through and through, and made him take 
all the precautions of a thief in the night. 

A thief in the night-: that was the phrase which 
kept repeating itself to him, till he said it over under 
his breath, as he put off his shoes, and stole up the 
piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, 
at the blackness within. He did not at once notice 
that the shutters were open, with an effect of reckless 
security or indifference, which struck a pang to his 
heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of 
this faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded 
his home, and which he had been the first to break 
down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He tried 
the windows j he must get in, somehow, and he did not 


428 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


dare to ring at the door, or to call out. He must steal 
into his house, as he had stolen out of it. 

One of the windows yielded ; the long glass door 
gave inward, and he stepped on the carpetless floor of 
the library. Then the fact of the change that must 
have passed upon the whole house enforced itself, and 
lie felt a passionate desire to face and appropriate the 
change in every detail. He lit one of the little 
taper matches that he had with him, and, hollow- 
ing his hands around it, let its glimmer show him the 
desolation of the dismantled and abandoned rooms. 
He passed through the doors set wide between library 
and drawing-room and dining-room and hall ; and then 
from his dying taper he lit another, and mounted the 
stairs. He had no need to seek his daughter’s rooms 
to satisfy himself that the whole place was empty ; they 
were gone ; but he had a fantastic expectation that in 
his own room he might find himself. There was noth- 
ing there, either ; it was as if he were a ghost come 
back in search of the body it had left behind; any 
one that met him, he thought, might well be more 
frightened than he ; and yet he did not lose the sense 
of risk to himself. 

He had an expectation, born of long custom, ajid 
persisting in spite of the nakedness of the place other- 
wise, that he should see the pictured face of his wife, 
where it had looked so mercifully at him that last 
night from the portrait above the mantel. He sighed 
lightly to find it gone ; her chair was gone from the 
bay-window, where he had stood to gaze his last over 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


429 


the possessions lie was abandoning. He let liis little 
taper die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the 
glimmer of the window, and looked out again. The 
conservatories and the dairies and the barns showed 
plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night ; in 
the coachman’s quarters a little point of light ap- 
peared for a moment through the window, and then 
vanished. 

Northwick knew from this that the place was inhab- 
ited; unless some homeless tramp like himself was 
haunting it, and it went through his confusion that he 
must speak to Newton, and caution him about tramps 
sleeping in the barns anywhere ; they might set them 
on fire. His mind reverted to his actual condition, 
and he wondered how long he could come and go as a 
vagrant without being detected. If it were not for the 
action against vagrants which he had urged upon the 
selectmen the summer before, he might now come and 
go indefinitely. But he was not to blame ; it was be- 
cause Mrs. Morrell had encouraged the tramps by her 
reckless charity that something had to be done ; and 
now it was working against him. It was hard: he 
remembered reading of a man who had left his family 
one day, and taken a room across the street, and lived 
there in sight of them unknown till he died : and now 
he could not have passed his own door without danger 
of arrest as a vagrant. He struck another match, and 
looked at himself in the mirror framed as a window at 
one side of the bay ; he believed that with the long 
white beard he wore, and his hair which he had let 
grow, his own children would not have known him. 


430 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


It was bitter ; but his mind suddenly turned from 
the thought, with a lightness it had, and he remem- 
bered that now he did not know wlmre his children 
lived. He must find out, , lie had come to 

see them ; and he could not back without. He 
must hurry to find them, and be g<?ne again before 
daylight. He crept out to the stairs, and struck a 
match to light himself down, and he carried it still burn- 
ing, toward the window he had left open behir d him 
in the library. As soon as he stepped out on 3 the 
piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a 
man. 

“ I’ve got you ! What you doing in here, I’d like 
to know? Who are you, anyway, you thief? Just 
hold that lantern up to his face, a minute, ’Lectra.” 

Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not 
struggled ; he had known Elbridge Newton’s voice at 
the first word. He saw the figure of a woman beside 
him, stooping over the lantern, and he knew that it 
was Mrs. Newton ; but he made no sort of appeal to 
either. He did not make the least sound or move- 
ment. The habit of his whole life was reticence, es- 
pecially in emergencies ; and this habit had been 
strengthened and deepened by the solitude in which 
he had passed the last half-year. If a knife had been 
put to his throat, he would not have uttered a cry for 
mercy ; but his silence was so involuntary that it seemed 
to him he did not breathe while Mrs. Newton was 
turning up the wick of the lantern for a good look at 
him. When the light was lifted to his face. North- 


THE QUALITY OF 3IERCY. 


431 


wick felt that they both knew him through the disguise 
of his white beard. Elbridge’s grip fell from him and 
let him stan^ free. ‘‘ Well, I’ll be dumned,” said 
Elbridge. 

His wife remainea Holding the lantern to North- 
wick’s face. “ What are you going to do with him ? ” 
she asked atdast, as if Northwick were not present ; 
he stood so dumb and impassive. 

“ ^ d’ know as I know,” said Newton, overpowered 
.-he peculiar complications of the case. He escaped 
from them for the moment in the probable inference : 
“ I presume he was lookin’ for his daughters. Didn’t 
you know,” he turned to Northwick, with a sort of 
apologetic reproach, lightin’ matches that way in the 
house, here, you might set it on fire, and you’d be 
sure to make people think there was somebody there, 
anyhow ? ” 

Northwick made no answer to this question, and 
Newton looked him carefully over in the light of the 
lantern. “ I swear, he’s in his stockin’ feet. You 
look round and see if you can find his shoes, anywhere, 
’Lectra. You got the light.” Newton seemed to insist 
upon this because it relieved him to delegate any step 
in this difficult matter to another. 

His wife cast the light of her lantern about, and 
found the shoes by the piazza-steps, and as North- 
wick appeared no more able to move than to speak, 
Elbridge stooped down, and put on his shoes for him 
where he stood. When he lifted himself, he stared 

again at Northwick, as if to make perfectly sure of 
28 T 


432 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


him, and then he said, with a sigh of perplexity, You 
go ahead, a little ways, 'Lectra, with the lantern. ** I 
presume we’ve got to take him to ’em,” and his wife, 
usually voluble and wilful, silently obeyed. 

“ Want to see your daughters ? ” he asked North - 
wick, and at the silence which was his only response, 
Newton said, “ Well, I don’t know as I blame him 
any, for not wantin’ to commit himself. You don’t 
want to be afraid,” he added, to Northwick, “ that 
anybody’s goin’ to keep you against your will, you 
know.” 

“Well, I guess not,” said Mrs. Newton, finding her 
tongue, at last. “ If they was to double and treble 
the reward, I’d slap ’em in the face first. Bring him 
along, Elbridge.” 

As Northwick no more moved than spoke, New- 
ton took him by the arm, and helped him down 
the piazza-steps and into the dark of the avenue, tun- 
nelled about their feet by the light of the lantern, as 
they led and pushed their helpless cat)ture toward the 
lodge at the avenue gate. 

Northwick had heard and understood them ; he 
did not know what secret purpose their pretence of 
taking him to his children might not cover ; but he 
was not capable of offering any resistance, and when 
he reached the cottage he sank passively on the steps. 
He shook in every nerve, while Elbridge pounded on 
the door, till a window above was lifted, and Ade- 
line’s frightened voice quavered out, “ Who is it ? 
What is it?” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


433 


Mrs. Newton took the words out of her liusband’s 
mouth. ‘‘It’s us, Miss Northwick. If you’re sure 
you’re awake — 

Oh, yes. I haven’t been asleep ! ” 

“ Then listen ! ” said INIr. Newton, in a lowered 
tone. And don’t be scared. Don’t call out — don’t 
speak loud. There’s somebody here — Come down, 
and let him in.” 

Northwick stood up. He heard the fluttered rush 
of steps on the stairs inside. The door opened, and 
Adeline caught him in her arms, with choking, joyful 
sobs. “ Oh, father ! Oh, father ! Oh, I knew it ! I 
knew it ! Oh, oh, oh ! Where was he ? How did 
you find him ? ” 

She did not heed their answers. She did not real- 
ize that she was shutting them out when she shut her- 
self in with her father ; but they understood. 


VL 


Northavick stared round him in the light of the 
lamp which Adeline turned up. He held fast by one 
of her hands. ‘‘ What’s he going to do ? Has he 
gone for the officer ? Is he going to give me up ? ” 

“ Who ? Elbridge Newton ? Well, I guess his 
wife hasn’t forgot what you did for them when their 
little boy died, if he has, and I guess he hasn’t gone 
for any officer ! Where did you see him ? ” 

‘‘ In the house. I was there.” 

But how did he know it ? ” 

‘‘ I had to have a light to see by.” 

“Oh, my goodness! If anybody else had caught 
you I don’t know what I should have done. Ijlon’t 
see how you could be so venturesome 1 ” 

“ I thought you were there. I had to come back. 
I couldn’t stand it any longer, when that fellow came 
with your letter.” 

“ Oh, he found you,” she cried, joyfully. “ I knew 
he would find you, and I said so — Sit down, father ; 
do.” She pushed him gently into a cushioned rock- 
ing-chair. “ It’s mother’s chair ; don’t you remember, 
it always stood in the bay-window in your room, where 
she put it? Louise Hilary bought it at the sale — I 
know she bought it — and gave it to me. It was 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


435 


because the place was mother’s that I wouldn’t let 
Suzette give it up to the company.” 

Pie did not seem to understand what she was say- 
ing. He stared at her piteously, and he said with an 
effort : “ Adeline, I didn’t know about that accident. 
I didn’t know you thought I was dead, or I — ” 

No ! Of course you didn’t ! I always told Su- 
zette you didn’t. Don’t'you suppose I always believed 
in you, father ? We both believed in you, through it 
all ; and when that letter of yours came out in the 
paper I knew you were just overwrought.” 

North wick rose and looked fearfully round him 
again, and then came closer to her, with his hand in 
his breast. He drew it out with the roll of bank-notes 
in it. Here’s that money I took away with me. I 
always, kept it in my belt: but it hurt me there. I 
want you should take care of it for me, and we can 
make terms with them to let me stay.” 

“ Oh, they wont let you stay. We’ve tried it over 
and over ; and tlie court won’t let you. They say 
you will have to be tried, and they will put you in 
prison.” 

Northwick mechanically put the money back. 

“ Well, let them,” said the broken man. “ I can't 
stand it any longer. I have got to stay.” He sank 
into the chair, and Adeline broke into tears. 

Oh, I can’t let you ! You must go back ! Think 
of your good name, that there’s never been any dis- 
grace on ! ’ 

‘•Wliat — what’s that?” Northwick (piavered, at 
the sound of footsteps overhead 


436 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Why, it’s Suzette, of course ! And 1 hadn’t called 
her,” said Adeline, breaking off from her weeping. 
She ran to the foot of the stairs, and called, huskily, 
“ Suzette, Suzette ! Come down this instant ! Come 
down, come down, come down ! ” She bustled back 
to her father. You must be hungry, ain’t you, 
father ? Til get you a cup of tea over my lamp here ; 
the water heats as quick ! And you’ll feel stronger after 
that. Don’t you be afraid of anything; there’s no- 
body here but Suzette ; Mrs. Newton comes to do the 
work in the morning ; they used to stay with us, but 
we don’t mind it a bit, being alone here. I did want 
to go into the farm-house, when we left our own, but 
Suzette couldn’t bear to live right in sight of our 
home, all the time ; she said it would be worse than 
being afraid; but we haven’t been afraid; and the 
Newtons come all the time to see if we want anything. 
And now that you’ve got back — ” She stopped, and 
stared at him in a daze, and then turned to her lamp 
again, as if unable to cope with the situation. ‘‘ I 
haven’t been very well, lately, but I’m getting better ; 
and if only we could get the court to let you come 
back I should be as well as ever. I don’t believe but 
what Mr. Hilary will make it out yet. Father ! ” 
She dropped her voice, and glanced round ; “ Suzette’s 
engaged to young Mr. Hilary — oh, he’s the best young 
man ! — and I guess they’re going to be married just 
as soon as ^ye can arrange it about you. I thought 
I’d tell you before she came down.” 

Northwick did not seem to have taken the fact in, 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


437 


or else he could not appreciate it rightly. “ Do you 
suppose/’ he whispered back, “ that she’ll speak to 
me?” 

“ Speak to you ! ” 

“ I didn’t know. She was always so proud. But 
now I’ve brought back the money, all but the little 
I’ve had to use — ” 

There was a rustle of skirts on the stairs. Su- 
zette stood a moment in the doorway, looking at her 
father, as if not sure he was real ; then she flung her- 
self upon him, and buried her face in his white beard, 
and kissed him with a passion of grief and love. She 
sank into his lap, with a long sigh, and let her head 
fall on his shoulder. All that was not simply father 
and daughter was for the moment annulled between 
them. 

Adeline looked on admiring, while she kept about 
heating the water over her lamp ; and they all took 
up fitfully the broken threads of their lives, and tried 
to piece them again into some sort of unity. 

Adeline did most of the talking. She told her 
father how friends seemed to have been raised up for 
them in their need, when it was greatest. She praised 
herself for the inspiration she had in going to Putney 
for advice, because she remembered how her father 
had spoken of him that last night, and for refusing to 
give up the property to the company. She praised 
Putney for justifying and confirming her at every 
step, and for doing everything that could be done 
about the court. She praised the Hilarys, all of 


438 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


them, for their constancy to her father throughout, and 
she said she believed that if Mr. Hilary could have 
had his way, there never would have been any 
trouble at all about the accounts, and she wanted her 
father to understand just how the best people felt 
about him. He listened vaguely to it all. A clock in 
the next room struck four, and Northwick started to 
his feet. I must go ! ” 

‘‘ Go ? ” Adeline echoed. 

‘‘ Why must you go ? ” said Suzette, clinging about 
him. 

They were all silent in view of the necessity that 
stared them in the face. 

Then Adeline roused herself from the false dream 
of safety in which her words had lulled her. She 
wailed out, “He’s got to go! Oh, Suzette, let him 
go ! He’s got to go to prison if he stays ! 

“ It’s prison there"' said Northwick. “ Let me stay ! ” 

“ No, no ! I can’t let you stay I Oh, how hard I 
am to make you go ! What makes you leave it all to 
me, Suzette ? It’s for you, as much as anything, I do 
it.” 

“ Then don’t do it ! If father wants to stay ; if he 
thinks he had better, or if he will feel easier, he shall 
stay ; and you needn’t think of me. I won’t let you 
think of me ! ” 

“ But what would they say — Mr. Hilary say — if 
they sent father to prison ? ” 

Suzette’s eyes glowed. “ Let them say what they 
will. I know I can trust but if he wants to give 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


439 


me up for that, he may. If father wishes to stay, he 
shall, and nothing that they can do to him will ever 
make him different to us. If he tells us that he didn’t 
mean anything wrong, that will be enough ; and people 
may say what they please, and think what they please.” 

Northwick listened with a confused air. He looked 
from one to the other, as if beaten back and forth be- 
tween them ; he started violently, when Adeline al- 
most screamed out : “ Oh, 3^011 don’t know what you’re 
talking about? Father, tell her you don’t wish to 
stay ! ” 

“ I must go, Suzette ; I had better go — ” 

“ Here, drink this tea, now, and it will give }"ou a 
little strength.” Adeline pressed the cup on him that 
she had been getting ready through all, and made him 
drain it. “ Now, then, hurry, hurry, hurry, father ! Say 
good-by ! You’ve got to go, now — yes, you’ve got 
to ! — but it won’t be for long. You’ve seen us, and 
you’ve found out we’re alive and well, and now w^e 
can write — be sure \"ou write, father, when you get 
back there ; or, you’d better telegraph — and we can 
arrange — I know we can — for you to come home, 
and stay home.” 

“ Home ! Home ! ” Northwick murmured. 

‘‘ It seems as if he wanted to kill me ! ” Adeline 
sobbed into her hands. She took them away. ‘‘ Well, 
stay^ then I ” she said. 

No, no ! I’ll go,” said Northwick. You’re not 
to blame, Adeline. It’s all right — all for the best. 


440 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


And let us know where you are, when you get 
there, this time, father ! ” said Adeline. 

‘‘ Yes, I will.” 

‘‘ And we will come to you, there,” Suzette j3ut in. 

We can live together in Canada, as well as here.” 

North wick shook his head. It’s not the same. I 
can’t get used to it ; their business methods are differ- 
ent. I couldn’t put my capital into any of their enter- 
prises. I’ve looked the whole ground over. And — 
and I want to get back into our place.”* 

He said these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with 
an air of final conviction, as after much sober reflec- 
tion. He sat down, but Adeline would not let him 
be. ‘‘ Well, then, we’ll help you to think out some 
way of getting back, after we’re all there together. 
Go ; it’ll soon begin to be light, and I’m afraid some- 
body’ll see you, and stop you ! But oh, my goodness I 
How are you going ? You can’t walk ! And if you 
try to start from our depot, they’ll know you, some 
one, and they’ll arrest you. What shall we do ? ” 

I came over from East Hatboro’ to-night,” said 
Northwick. ‘‘ I am going back there to get the morn- 
ing train.” This was the way he had planned, and he 
felt the strength of a fixed purpose in returning to his 
plan in words. 

“ But it’s three miles ! ” Adeline shrieked. “ You 
can never get there in the world in time for the train. 
Oh, why didn't I tell Elbridge to come for you! I 
must go and tell him to get ready right away.” 

No, i’ll go ! ” said Suzette. “ Adeline ! ” 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


441 


Adeline flung the door open, and started back, with 
a cry, from the dark, van-like vehicle before the door, 
which looked like the Black Maria, or an undertaker’s 
wagon, in the pale light. 

‘‘ It’s me,” said Elbridge’s voice from the front of 
it, and Elbridge’s head dimly showed itself. ‘‘ I got to 
thinkin’ maybe you’d want the carryall, and I didn’t 
know but what I’d better go and hitch up, anyway.” 

“ Oh, well, we did! ” cried Adeline, with an hyster- 
ical laugh. Here, now, father, get right in I Don’t 
lose a second. Kiss Suzette ; good-by ! Be sure 
you get him to East Hatboro’ in time for the four- 
forty, Elbridge ! ” She helped her father, shaking 
and stumbling, into the shelter of the curtained carry- 
all. If anybody tries to stop you — ” 

‘‘ I’d like to see anybody try to stop me,” said El- 
bridge, and he whipped up his horse. Then he leaned 
back toward Northwick, and said, I’m going to get 
the black colt’s time out of the old mare.” 

“ Which mare is it ? ” Northwick asked. 


VII. 


On his way home from the station, Elbridge Newton 
began to have some anxieties. He had no longer oc- 
casion for any about North wick, he was safe on his 
way back to Canada; and Elbridge’s anxieties were 
for himself. He was in the cold fit after his act of 
ardent generosity. He had no desire to entangle him- 
self with the law by his act of incivism in helping 
Northwick to escape, and he thought it might be well 
to put himself on the safe side by seeing Putney about 
it, and locking the stable after the horse was stolen. 

He drove round by the lawyer’s house, and stopped 
at his gate just as Putney pushed his lawn-mower up 
to it, in his exercise of the instrument before break- 
fast. 

Elbridge leaned out of the carryall, and asked, in a 
low confidential voice, If J. Milton Northwick was 
to come back here, on the sly, say, to see his fam- 
ily, and I was to help him git off again, would I be 
li’ble ? 

‘‘ Why ? ” asked Putney. 

Because I just done it,” said Elbridge, desper- 
ately. 

“ Just done it ? ” shouted Putney. Why, con- 
found you ! ” He suddenly brought his voice down. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


443 


“ Do you mean to tell me the fellow’s been back here, 
and you didn’t let me know ? ” 

“ I hadn’t any orders to do it,” Elbridge weakly 
urged. 

“ Orders, the devil ! ” Putney retorted. “ I’d ’a’ 
given a hundred dollars to see that man and talk with 
him. Come, now ; tell me all you know about it ! 
Don’t miss a thing I ” After a few words from New- 
ton, he broke out : “ Found him in the house ! And 
I was down there prowling round the place myself not 
three hours before ! Go on ! Great Scott ! Just 
think of it ! ” 

Putney was at one of those crises of his life when 
his drink-devil was besetting him with sore temptation, 
and for the last twenty-four hours he had been fight- 
ing it with the ruses and pretences which he had 
learned to employ against it, but he felt that he was 
losing the game, though he was playing for much 
greater stakes than usual. He had held out so long 
since his last spree, that if he lost now he would de- 
feat hopes that were singularly precious and sacred to 
him : the hopes that those who loved him best, and 
distrusted him most, and forgave him soonest, had be- 
gun to cherish. It would not break his wife’s heart ; 
she was used to his lapses ; but it would wring it more 
cruelly than usual if he gave way now. 

When the fiend thrust him out of his house the 
night before, he knew that she knew of it , though 
she let him go in that fearful company, and made no 
effort to keep him. He was so strait an agnostic that. 


444 


TIIK QUALITY OF MERCY. 


as he boasted, he had no superstitions even ; but his 
relation to the Northvvicks covered tlie period of his 
longest resistance of temptation, and by a sort of in- 
stinctive, brute impulse, he turned his step towards 
the place where they lived, as if there might be rescue 
for him in the mere vicinity of those women who had 
appealed to him in their distress, as to a faithful en- 
emy. riis professional pride, his personal honor, were 
both involved in the feeling that he must not fad 
them ; their implicit reliance had been a source of 
strength to him. He was always hoping for some 
turn of allairs which would enable him to serve them, 
or rather to serve Adeline ; for he cared little for 
Suzette, or only secondarily ; and since Pinney had 
gone upon his mission to Canada he was daily looking 
for this chance to happen. He must keep himself for 
that, and not because of them alone, but because those 
dearest to him had come tacitly to connect his re- 
sistance of the tempter with Ids zeal for the interests 
of his clients. With no more reasoned motives than 
these he had walked over the Northwick place, calling 
himself a fool for supposing that some virtue should 
enter into him out of the ground there, and yet lind- 
ing a sort of relief, in the mere mechanical exercise, the 
novelty of exploring by night the property grown so 
familiar to him by day, and so strangely mixed up with 
the great trial and problem of his own usefulness. 

He listened by turns, with a sinking and a rising 
heart, as Newton now dug the particulars of his adven- 
ture out of himself. At the end, he turned to go into 
the house. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


445 


“ Well, what do you say, Squire Putney ? ” Elbridge 
called softly after him. 

“Say?’’ 

“ You know : about what I done.” 

“ Keep your mouth shut about what you ‘ done.’ I 
should like to see you sent to jail, though, for what 
you didn’t do.” 

Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney’s re- 
sentment, and Putney, already busy with the poten- 
tialities of the future, was buoyed up by the strong 
excitement of what had actually happened rather than 
finally cast down by what he had missed. He took 
three cups of the blackest coffee at breakfast, and he 
said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, “Well, 
Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow.” 


VITL 


Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till 
Elbridge came back. She asked Suzette whether she 
believed their father would get away ; she said she 
knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that 
slow, old mare, and their father would be arrested. 
Weak as she was from the sick-bed she had left to 
welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so as to be 
ready for the worst ; she was going to jail with him if 
they brought him back ; she had made up her mind to 
that. From time to time she went out and looked up 
the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back alone, or 
whether the officers were bringing her father ; she ex- 
pected they would bring him first to his family ; she 
did not know why. Suzette tried to keep her indoors ; 
to make her lie down. She refused, with wild up- 
braidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared 
anything for her father ; she had wanted to give their 
mother’s property away, to please the Hilarys ; and 
now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she 
was perfectly indifferent to everything else. She 
asked Suzette what had come over her. 

Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his 
horse, when he came back. Then he walked to the 
lodge to report. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


447 


Is he safe ? Did he get away ? Where is he ? 
Adeline shrieked at him before he could get a word 
out. 

‘‘ He’s all right, Miss Northwick,” Elbridge an- 
swered soothingly. ‘‘He’s on his way back to Can- 
ady, again.” 

“ Tlien I’ve driven liim away ! ” she lamented. 
“ I’ve hunted him out of his home, and I shall never 
see him any more. Send for him ! Send for him ! 
Bring him hack, I tell you ! Go right straight after 
liim, and tell him I said to come back ! What are you 
standing there for ? ” 

She fell fainting. Elbridge helped Suzette carry her 
upstairs to her bed, and then ran to get his wife, 
to stay with them while he went for the doctor. 

Matt Hilary had been spending the night at the 
rectory with Wade, and he walked out to take leave 
of Suzette once more before he went home. He found 
the doctor just driving away. “ Miss Northwick seems 
not so well,” said the doctor. “ I’m very glad you 
happen to be here, on all accounts. I shall come 
again later in the day.” 

Matt turned from the shadow of mystery the doc- 
tor’s manner left, and knocked at the door. It was 
opened by Suzette almost before he touched it. 

“ Come in,” she said, in a low voice, whose quality 
fended him from her almost as much as the condi- 
tional look she gave him. The excited babble of the 
sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton’s 
nasal attempts to quiet her, broke in upon their talk. 

29 


448 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Mr. Hilary,” said Suzette, formally, are you 
willing my father should come back, no matter what 
happens ? ” 

‘‘ If he wishes to come back. You know what I 
have always said.” 

And you would not care if they put him in 
prison ? ” 

‘‘ I should care very much.” 

‘‘ You would be ashamed of me ! ” 

No ! Never ! AYhat has it to do with you ? ” 
Then,” she pursued, ‘‘ he has come b^ck. He has 
been here.” She flashed all the fact upon him in 
vivid, rapid phrases, and he listened with an intelligent 
silence that stayed and comforted her as no words 
could have done. Before she had finished, his arms 
were round her, and she felt how inalienably faithful 
he was. And now Adeline is raving to have him 
come back again, and stay. She thinks she drove him 
away ; she will die if something can’t be done. She 
says she would not let him stay because — because 
you would be ashamed of us. She says I would be 
ashamed — ” 

“ Suzette ! Sue ! ” Adeline called down from the 
chamber above, “don’t you let Mr. Hilary go before I 
get there. I want to speak to him,” and while they 
stared helplessly at each other, they heard her saying 
to Mrs. Newton, “Yes, I shall, too! I’m perfectly 
rested, now ; and I shall go down. I should think I 
knew how I felt. I don’t care what the doctor said ; 
and if you try to stop me — ” She came clattering 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


449 


down the stairs in the boots which she had pulled 
loosely on, and as soon as she showed her excited face 
at the door, she began ; I’ve thought out a plan, 
Mr. Hilary, and I want you should go and see Mr. 
Putney about it. You ask him if it won’t do. They 
can get father let out on bail, when he comes back, 
and I can be his bail, and then, when there’s a trial, 
they can take me instead of him. It won’t matter to 
the court which they have, as long as they have some- 
body. Now, you go and ask Mr. Putney. I know 
he’ll say so, for he’s thought just as I have about 
father’s case, all along. Will you go ? ” 

“ Will you go up and lie down again, Adeline, if 
Mr. Hilary will go ? ” Suzette asked, like one dealing 
with a capricious child. 

What do you all want me to lie down for ? ” Ade- 
line turned upon her. ‘‘ I’m perfectly well. And do 
you suppose I can rest, with such a thing on my mind ? 
If you want me to rest, you’d better let him go and 
find out what Mr. Putney says. I think we’d better 
all go to Canada and bring father back with us. He 
isn’t fit to travel alone or with strangers ; he needs 
some one that understands his ways ; and I’m going 
to him, just as soon as Mr. Putney approves of my 
plan, and I know he will. But I don’t want Mr. Hil- 
ary to lose any time, now. I want to be in Quebec 
about as soon as father is. Will you go ? ” 

“ Yes, Miss Northwick,” said Matt, taking her 
tremulous hand. I’ll go to Mr. Putney ; and I’ll 
see my father again ; and whatever can be done to 


450 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


save your father any further suffering, or your- 
self — ” 

‘‘I don’t care for myself,” she said, plucking her 
hand away. “ I’m young and strong, and I can bear 
it. But it’s father I’m so anxious about.” 

She began to cry, and at a look from Suzette, Matt 
left them. As he walked along up toward the village 
in mechanical compliance with Adeline’s crazy wish, 
he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the 
case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and pallia- 
tives. There seemed indeed but one remedy for the 
trouble, and that was for Northwick to surrender him- 
self, and for them all to meet the consequences together. 
He realized how desperately homesick the man must 
have been to take the risks he had run in stealing 
back for a look upon the places and the faces so dear 
to him ; his heart was heavy with pity for him. One 
might call him coward and egotist all one would ; at 
the end remained the fact of a love which, if it could 
not endure heroically, was still a deep and strong 
affection, doubtless the deepest and strongest thing in 
the man’s weak and shallow nature. It might be his 
truest inspiration, and if it prompted him to venture 
everything, and to abide by whatever might befall 
him, for the sake O' being near those he loved, and 
enjoying the convict’s wretched privilege of looking on 
them now and then, who should gainsay him ? 

Matt took Wade in on his way to Putney’s office, to 
lay this question before him, and he answered it for 
him in the same breath : Certainly no one less deeply 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


451 


concerned tlian the man’s own flesli and blood could 
forbid him.” 

I’m not sure,” said Wade, “ that even his own 
flesh and blood would have a supreme right there. It 
may be that love, and not duty, is the highest thing in 
life. Oh, I know how we reason it away, and say 
that true love is unselfish and can find its fruition in 
the very sacrifice of our impulses ; and we are fond of 
calling our impulses blind, but God alone knows 
whether they are blind. The reasoned sacrifice may 
satisfy the higher soul, but what about the simple and 
primitive natures which it won’t satisfy ? ” 

For answer. Matt told how Northwick had come 
back, at the risk of arrest, for an hour with his children, 
and was found in the empty house that had been their 
home, and brought to them : how he had besought 
them to let him stay, but they had driven him back to 
his exile. Matt explained how he was on his way to 
the lawyer, at Adeline’s frantic demand, to go all over 
the case again, and see if something could not be done 
to bring Northwick safely home. He had himself 
no hope of finding any loophole in the law, through 
which the fugitive could come and go ; if he returned. 
Matt felt sure that he would be arrested and convicted, 
but he was not sure that this might not be the best 
thing for all. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always 
believed that if he could voluntarily submit himself to 
the penalty of his offence, the penalty would be the 
greatest blessing for him on earth ; the only blessing 
for his ruined life.” 


452 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


“ Yes,” Wade answered, “we have always thought 
alike about that, and perhaps this torment of longing 
for his home and children, may be the divine means of 
leading him to accept the only mercy possible with 
God for such a sufferer. If there were no one but 
him concerned, we could not hesitate in urging him 
to return. But the innocent who must endure the 
shame of his penalty with him — ” 

“ They are ready for that. Would it be worse than 
what they have learned to endure ? ” 

“ Perhaps not. But I was not thinking of his chil- 
dren alone. You, yourself, Matt ; your family — ” 
Matt threw up his arms impatiently, and made for 
the door. “ There’s no question of me. And if they 
could not endure their portion, — the mere annoy- 
ance of knowing the slight for them in the minds of 
vulgar people, — I should be ashamed of them.” 

“ Well, you are right. Matt,” said his friend. “ God 
bless you and guide you ! ” added the priest. 

The lawyer had not yet come to his office, and Matt 
went to find him at his house. Putney had just fin- 
ished his breakfast, and they met at his gate, and he 
turned back indoors with Matt. “Well, you know 
what’s happened, I see,” he said, after the first glance 
at Matt’s face. 

“ Yes, I know ; and now what can be done ? Are 
you sure we’ve considered every point ? Isn’t there 
some chance — ” 

Putney shook his head, and then bit off a piece of 
tobacco before he began to talk. “ I’ve been over the 


THE QUALITY OF :MERCY. 


453 


whole case in my mind this morning, and I’m per- 
fectly certain tliere isn’t the shadow of a chance of 
his escaping trial if he gives himself up. That’s what 
yon mean, I suppose ? ” 

‘‘Yes; that’s what I mean,” said Matt, with a cer- 
tain disappointment. He supposed he had nerved him- 
self for the worst, but he found he had been willing to 
accept something short of it. 

“ At times I’m almost sorry he got off,” said Putney. 
“ If we could have kept him, and surrendered him to 
the law, I believe we could have staved off the trial, 
though we couldn’t have prevented it, and I believe 
we could have kept him out of State’s prison on the 
ground of insanity.” Matt started impatiently. “ Oh, 
I don’t mean that it could be shown that he was of un- 
sound mind when he used the company’s funds and tam- 
pered with their books, though I have my own opinion 
about that. But I feel sure that he’s of unsound mind 
at present : and I believe we could show it so clearly 
in court that the prosecution would find it impossible 
to convict. We could have him sent to the insane 
asylum, and that would be a creditable exit from the 
affair in the public eye ; it would have a retroactive 
effect that would popularly acquit him of the charges 
against him.” 

Putney could not forego a mischievous enjoyment 
of Matt’s obvious discomfort at this sim^estion. His 

oo 

fierce eyes blazed ; but he added seriously, “ Why 
shouldn’t he have the advantage of the truth, if that 
is the truth about him ? And I believe it is. I think 


454 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


it could be honestly and satisfactorily proved from his 
history, ever since the defalcation came out, that his 
reason is affected. His whole conduct, so far as I 
know it, shows it ; and I should like a chance to argue 
the case in court. And I feel pretty sure I shall, yet. 
I’m just as certain as I sit here that he will come back 
again. He can’t keep away, and another time he may 
not fall into the hands of friends. It will be a good 
while before any rumor of last night’s visit gets out ; 
but it will get out at last, and then the detectives will 
be on the watch for him. Perhaps it will be just as 
well for us if he falls into their hands. If we pro- 
duced him in court it might be more difficult to work 
the plea of insanity. But I do think the man’s insane, 
and I should go into the case with a full and thorough 
persuasion on that point. Did he tell them where to 
find him in Canada ? ” 

“ He promised to let them know.” 

I doubt if he does,” said Putney. “ He means to 
try coming back again. The secrecy he’s kept as to 
his whereabouts — the perfectly needless and motive- 
less secrecy, as far as his children are concerned — 
would be a strong point in favor of the theory of in- 
sanity. Yes, sir ; I believe the thing could be done ; 
and I should like to do it. If the pressure of our life 
produces insanity of the homicidal and suicidal type, 
there’s no reason why it shouldn’t produce insanity of 
the defalcational type. The conditions tend to pro- 
duce it in a proportion that is simply incalculable, and 
I think it’s time that jurisprudence recognized the fact 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


455 


of such a mental disease, say, as defalcomania. If 
the fight for money and material success goes on, 
with the opportunities that the accumulation of vast 
sums in a few hands afford, what is to be the end ? ’’ 
Matt had no heart for the question of metaphysics 
or of economics, whichever it was, that would have 
attracted him in another mood. He went back to 
Suzette and addressed himself witli her to the task of 
quieting her sister. Adeline would be satisfied with 
nothing less than the assurance that Putney agreed 
with her that her father would be acquitted if he 
merely came back and gave himself up ; she had 
changed to this notion in Matt’s absence, and with 
the mental reservation wliich he permitted himself he 
was able to give the assurance she asked. Then at 
last she consented to go to bed, and wait for the doc- 
tor’s coming, before she began her preparations for 
joining her father in Canada. She did not relinquisli 
that purpose ; she felt sure that he never could get 

home without her ; and Suzette must come, too. 

U 


IX. 


The fourth morning, when Piiiiiey went down into 
the hotel office at Quebec, after a trying night with 
his sick child and its anxious mother, he found North- 
wick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of 
the troubled dream he had waked from. 

“ Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have 
you been ? ” he demanded, taking the chance that this 
phantasm might be flesh and blood. 

A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness 
of North wick’s face. “ I’ve been at home — at Hat- 
boro’.” 

‘‘ Come off ! ” said Pinney, astounded out of the 
last remnant of deference he had tried to keep for 
Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at him a 
moment. “ Come in to breakfast, and tell me about 
it. If I could only have it for a scoop — ” 

Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the 
victuals refreshed and fortified him, he came out with 
his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney listened with 
mute admiration. “ Well, sir,” he said, ‘‘it’s the big- 
gest thing I ever heard of.” But his face darkened. 
“ I suppose you know it leaves me out in the cold. I 
came up here,” he explained, “ as the agent of your 
friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you’ve 


THE QUALITY OF 3IERCY. 


457 


gone and given the whole thing away, /can’t ask any- 
thing for my services/’ 

Northwick seemed interested, and even touched, by 
the hardship he had worked to Pinney. “ They don’t 
know where I am, now,” he suggested. 

“ Are you willing I should take charge of the case 
from this on ? ” asked Pinney. 

Yes. Only — don’t leave me,” said Northwick, 
with tremulous dependence. 

You may be sure I won’t let you out of my sight 
again,” said Pinney. He took a telegraphic blank 
from his breast pocket, and addressed it to Matt Hil- 
ary : “ Our friend here all right with ine at Murdock’s 
Hotel.” He counted the words to see that there 
were no more than ten ; then he called a waiter, and 
sent the despatch to the office. “ Tell ’em to pay it, 
and set it down against me. Tell ’em to rush it.” 

Pinney showed himself only less devoted to North- 
wick than to his own wife and child. His walks and 
talks were all with him ; and as the baby got better he 
gave himself more and more to the intimacy established 
with him ; and Northwick seemed to grow more and 
more reliant on Pinney’s filial cares. Mrs. Pinney 
shared these, as far as the baby would permit ; and 
she made the silent refugee at home with her. She 
had her opinion of his daughters, who did not come to 
him, now that they knew where he was ; but she con- 
cealed it from him, and helped him answer Suzette’s 
letters when he said he was not feeling quite well 
enough to write himself. Adeline did not write ; Su- 


458 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


zette always said she was not quite well, but was get- 
ting better. Then in one of Suzette's letters there 
came a tardy confession that Adeline was confined to 
her bed. She was tormented with the thought of 
having driven him away, and Suzette said she wished 
her to write and tell him to come back, or to let them 
come to him. She asked him to express some wish in 
the matter, so that she could show his answer to Ade- 
line. Suzette wrote that Mr. Hilary had come over 
from his farm, and was staying at Elbridge Newton’s, 
to be constantly near them ; and in fact, Matt was 
with them when Adeline suddenly died ; they had not 
thought her dangerously sick, till the very day of her 
death, when she began to sink rapidly. 

In the letter that brought this news, Suzette said 
that if they had dreamed of present danger they would 
have sent for their father to come back at any hazard, 
and she lamented that they had all been so blind. 
The Newtons would stay with her, till she could join 
him in Quebec ; or, if he wished to return, she and 
Matt were both of the same mind about it. They 
were ready for any event; but Matt felt that he ought 
to know there was no hope of his escaping a trial if 
he returned, and that he ought to be left perfectly 
free to decide. Adeline would be laid beside her 
mother. 

The old man broke into a feeble whimper as Mrs. 
Pinney read him the last words. Pinney, walking 
softly up and down with the baby in his arms, whim- 
pered too. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


459 


“ I believe he could be got off, if he went back/’ 
he said to his wife, in a burst of sympathy, when 
Northwick had taken his letter away to his own 
room. 

The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with 
self-interest in Finney’s soul. He conscientiously 
forbore to urge Northwick to return, but he could not 
help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a 
course. Before they parted for Finney’s own return, 
he confided his ambition for the future to Northwick, 
and as delicately as he could he suggested that if 
Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he 
could not find a more interested and attentive travelling- 
companion. Northwick seemed to take the right view 
of the matter, the business view, and Finney thought 
he had arranged a difficult point with great tact; but 
he modestly concealed his success from his wife. 
They both took leave of the exile with affection ; and 
Mrs. Finney put her arms round his neck and kissed 
him ; he promised her that he would take good care 
of himself in her absence. Finney put a business ad- 
dress in his hand at the last moment. 

Northwick seemed to have got back something of 
his moral force after these people, who had so 
strangely become his friends, left him to his own re- 
sources. Once more he began to dream of employing 
the money he had with him for making more, and pay- 
ing back the Fonkwasset company’s forced loans. He 
positively forbade Suzette’s coming to him, as she 
proposed, after Adeline’s funeral. He telegraphed to 


4G0 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


prevent her undertaking the journey, and he wrote, 
saying he wished to be alone for a while, and to decide 
for himself the question of his fate. He approved of 
Matt’s wish that they should be married at once, and 
he replied to Matt with a letter decently observant of 
the peculiar circumstances, recognizing the reluctance 
his father and mother might well feel, and expressing 
the hope that he was acting with their full and free 
consent. If this letter could have been produced in 
court, it would have told heavily against Putney’s the- 
ory of a defence on the ground of insanity, it was so 
clear, and just, and reasonable ; though perhaps an ex- 
pert might have recognized a mental obliquity in its 
affirmation of Northwick’s belief that Matt’s father 
would yet come to see his conduct in its true light, and 
to regard him as the victim of circumstances which he 
really was. 

Among the friends of the Hilarys there was mis- 
giving on this point of their approval of Matt’s mar- 
riage. Some of them thought that the parents’ hands 
had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old Brom- 
field Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with 
senile frankness. “ Hilary, you seem to have disap- 
pointed the expectation of the admirers of your iron 
firmness. I tell ’em that’s what you keep for your 
enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt’s 
case you ought to have been more of a Roman 
father.” 

“I’m just going to become one,” said Hilary, with 
the good temper proper to that moment of the dinner. 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


461 


“ Mrs. Hilary and Louise are taking me over to Rome 
for the winter.” 

“ You don’t say so, you don’t say ! ” said Corey, 
“ I wish my family would take me. Boston is gradu- 
ally making an old man of me. I’m afraid it will end 
by killing me.” 


X, 


North WICK, after the Pinneys went home, lapsed 
into a solitude relieved only by the daily letters that 
Suzette sent him. He shrank from the offers of 
friendly kindness on the part of people at the hotel, 
who pitied his loneliness ; and he began to live in a 
dream of his home again. He had relinquished that 
notion of attempting a new business life, which had 
briefly revived in his mind ; the same causes that had 
operated against it in the beginning, controlled and 
defeated it now. He felt himself too old to begin life 
over ; his energies were spent. Such as he had been, 
he had made himself very slowly and cautiously, in 
familiar conditions ; he had never been a man of busi- 
ness dash, and he could not pick himself up and 
launch himself in a new career, as a man of different 
make might have done, even at his age. Perhaps 
there had been some lesion of the will in that fever of 
his at Haha Bay, which disabled him from forming 
any distinct purpose, or from trying to carry out any 
such purpose as he did form. Perliaps he was, in his 
helplessness, merely of that refugee-type which exile 
moulds men to : a thing of memories and hopes, with- 
out definite aims or plans. 

As the days passed, he dwelt in an outward inert- 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


463 


ness, while his dreams and longings incessantly re- 
habilitated the home whose desolation he had seen 
with his own eyes. It would be better to go back and 
suffer the sentence of the law, and then go to live 
again in the place which, in spite of his senses, he 
could only imagine clothed in the comfort and state 
that had been stripped from it. Elbridge’s talk, on 
the way to West Hatboio’, about the sale, and what 
had become of the horses and cattle, and the plants, 
went for no more than the evidence of his own eyes 
that they were all gone. He did not realize, except 
in the shocks that the fact imparted at times, that 
death as well as disaster had invaded his home. Ad- 
eline was, for the most part, still alive : in his fond 
reveries she was present, and part of that home as she 
had always been. 

He began to flatter himself that if he went back he 
could contrive that compromise with the court which 
his friends had failed to bring about ; he persuaded 
himself that if it came to a trial he could offer evi- 
dence that would result in his acquittal. But if he 
must undergo some punishment for* the offence of 
being caught in transactions which were all the time 
carried on with impunity, he told himself that interest 
could be used to make his punishment light. In these 
hopeful moods it was a necessity of his drama that his 
transgression of the l^w should seem venial to him. 
It was only when he feared the worst that he felt 
guilty of wrong. 

It could not be said that these moments of a con- 
30 


464 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


sciousiiess of guilt were so frequent as ever to become 
confluent, and to form a mood. They came and went ; 
perhaps toward the last they were more frequent. 
What seems certain is that in the end there began to 
mix with his longing for home a desire, feeble and 
formless enough, for expiation. There began to be 
suggested to him from somewhere, somehow, some- 
thing like the thought that if he had really done 
wrong, there might be rest and help in accepting the 
legal penalty, disproportionate and excessive as it 
might be. He tried to make this notion appreciable 
to Pinney when they first met after he summoned 
Pinney to Quebec ; he offered it as an explanation of 
his action. 

In making up his mind to return at all hazards and 
to take all the chances, he remembered what Pinney 
had said to him about his willingness to bear him 
company. It was not wholly a generous impulse that 
prompted him to send for Pinney, or the self-sacri- 
ficing desire to make Pinney’s fortune in his new 
quality of detective ; he simply dreaded the long jour- 
ney alone ; he wanted the comfort of Pinney’s soci- 
ety. He liked Pinney, and he longed for the vulgar 
cheerfulness of his buoyant spirit. He felt that he 
could rest upon it in the fate he was bringing himself 
to face ; he instinctively desired the kindly, lying 
sympathy of a soul that had so much affinity with his 
own. He telegraphed Pinney to come for him, and 
he was impatient till he came. 

Pinney started the instant he received North wick’s 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


465 


telegram, and met him with an enthusiasm of congrat- 
ulation. “AYell, Mr. Northwick, this is a great thing. 
It’s the right thing, and it’s the wise thing. It’s 
going to have a tremendous effect. I suppose,” he 
added, a little tremulously, “ that you’ve thought it 
all thoroughly over ? ” 

“ Yes ; I’m prepared for the worst,” said North- 
wick. 

“ Oh, there won’t be any worst,'' Pinney returned 
gayly. “ There’ll be legal means of delaying the 
trial ; your lawyer can manage that ; or if he can’t, 
and you have to face the music at once, we can have 
you brought into court without the least publicity, and 
the judge will go through with the forms, and it’ll be 
all over before anybody knows anything about it. 
I’ll see that there’s no interviewing, and that there 
are no reporters present. There’ll probably be a 
brief announcement among the cases in court ; but 
there won’t be anything painful. You needn’t be 
afraid. But what I’m anxious about now is, not to 
bring any influence to bear on you. I promised my 
wife I wouldn’t urge you, and I won’t; I know I’m a 
little optimistic, and if you don’t see this thing exactly 
couleur de rose, don’t you do it from anything I say.” 
Pinney apparently put great stress upon himself to 
get this out. 

“I’ve looked it in the face,” said Northwick. 

“ And your friends know you’re coming back ? ” 

“ They expect me at any time. You can notify 
them.” 


46B 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


Piniiey drew a long, anxious breath. Well,’* he 
said, with a sort of desperation, “ then I don’t see why 
we don’t start at once.” 

Have you got your papers all right ? ” North wick 
asked. 

Yes,” said Pinney, with a blush. ‘‘ But you 
know,” he added, respectfully, “ I can’t touch you till 
we get over the line, Mr. Northwick.” 

“ I understand that. Let me see your warrant.” 

Pinney reluctantly produced the paper, and North- 
wick read it carefully over. He folded it up with a 
deep sigh, and took a long stiff envelope from his 
breast-pocket, and handed it to Pinney, with the 
warrant. Here is the money I brought with 
me.” 

“ Mr. Northwick ! It isn’t necessary yet ! Indeed 
it isn’t. I’ve every confidence in your honor as a 
gentleman.” Pinney’s eyes glowed with joy, and his 
fingers closed upon the envelope convulsively. But 
if you mean business — ” 

I mean business,” said Northwick. “ Count it.” 

Pinney took the notes out and ran them over. 
‘‘ Forty-one thousand six hundred and forty.” 

‘‘ That is right,” said Northwick. “ Now, another 
matter. Have you got hand-cuffs ? ” 

Why, Mr. Northwick ! What are you giving 
me?” demanded Pinney. I’d as soon put them on 
my own father.” 

I want you to put them on /we,” said Northwick. 

I intend to go back as your prisoner. If I have 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


467 


anything to expiate ’’ — and he seemed to indulge a 
question of the fact for the last time — ‘‘I want the 
atonement to begin as soon as possible. If you 
haven’t brought those 'things with you, you’d better 
go out to the police station and get them, while I 
attend to the tickets.” 

“ Oh, I needn’t go,” said Pinney, and his face 
burned. 

He was full of nervous trepidation at the start, and 
throughout the journey he was anxious and perturbed, 
while on North wick, after the first excitement, a deep 
quiet, a stupor, or a spiritual peace, seemed to have 
fallen. 

“ By George ! ” said Pinney, when they started, 
“ anybody to see us would think you were taking me 
back.” He was tenderly watchful of Northwick’s 
comfort ; he left him free to come and go at the 
stations ; from the restaurants he bought him things 
to tempt his appetite ; but Northwick said he did not 
care to eat. 

They had a long night in a day-car, for they found 
there was no sleeper on their train. In the morning, 
when the day broke, Northwick asked Pinney what 
the next station was. 

Pinney said he did not know. He looked at North- 
wick as if the possession of him gave him very little 
pleasure, and asked him how he had slept. 

“ I haven’t slept,” said Northwick. “ I suppose I’m 
rather excited. My nerves seem disordered.” 

‘‘ Well, of course,” said Pinney, soothingly. 


468 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


They were silent a moment, and then Northwick 
asked, ‘‘ What did you say the next station was ? ” 

‘‘I’ll ask the brakeman.” They could see the 
brakeman on the platform. Finney went out to him, 
and returned. “It’s Wellwater, he says. We get 
breakfast there.” 

“Then we’re over the line, now,” said Northwick. 

“Why, yes,” Finney admitted, reluctantly. He 
added, in a livelier note, “ You get a mighty good 
breakfast at Wellwater, and I’m ready to meet it half 
way.” He turned, and looked hard at Northwick. 
“ If I should happen to get left there, what would you 
do? Would you keep on, anyway? Is your mind 
still made up on that point ? I ask, because all kinds 
of accidents happen, and — ” Finney stopped, and 
regarded his captive fixedly. “ Or if you don’t feel 
quite able to travel — ” 

“ Let me see your warrant again,” said Northwick. 

Finney relaxed his gaze with a shrug, and produced 
the paper. Northwick read it all once more. “ I’m 
your prisoner,” he said, returning the paper. “ You 
can put the handcuffs on me now.” 

“ No, no, Mr. Northwick ! ” Finney pleaded. “ I 
don’t want to do that. I’m not afraid of your trying 
to get away. I assure you it isn’t necessary between 
gentlemen.” 

Northwick held out his wrists. “ Fut them on, 
please.” 

“ Oh, well, if I must! ” protested Finney. “ But I 
swear I won’t lock ’em.” He glanced round to find 


Till*: QUALITY OF MKRCY. 


469 


wlietlier any of the other passengers were noticing. 
“ You can slip ^em off whenever you get tired of ’em.” 
He pushed Northwick’s sleeves down over them with 
shame-faced anxiety. ‘‘ Don’t let people see the 
damned things, for God’s sake ! ’’ 

“ That’s good ! ” murmured North wick, as if the 
feel of the iron pleased him. 

The incident turned Finney rather sick. He went 
out on the platform of the car for a little breath of air, 
and some restorative conversation with the brakeman. 
When he came back, Northwick was sitting where he 
left him. Ilis head had fallen on his breast. “ Poor 
old fellow, he’s asleep,” Finney thought. He put his 
hand gently on Northwick’s shoulder. ‘‘ I’ll have to 
wake you here,” he said. ‘‘ We’ll be in, now, in a 
minute.” 

Northwick tumbled forward at his touch, and Fin- 
ney caught him round the neck, and lifted his face. 

“ Oh, my God ! He’s dead ! ” 

The loosened handcuffs fell on the floor. 


/ 


XL 


After they were married, Suzette and Matt went 
to live on his farm ; and it was then that she accom- 
plished a purpose she had never really given up. She 
surrendered the whole place at Hatboro’ to the com- 
pany her father had defrauded. She had no sentiment 
about the place, such as had made the act impossible 
to Adeline, and must have prevented the sacrifice on 
Suzette’s part as long as her sister lived. But suffer- 
ing from that and from all other earthly troubles was 
past for Adeline ; she was dead ; and Suzette felt it 
no wrong to her memory, to put out of her own hands 
the property which something higher than the logic of 
the case forbade her to keep. As far as her father 
was concerned, she took his last act as a sign that he 
wished to make atonement for the wrong he had com- 
mitted ; and she felt that the surrender of this prop- 
erty to his creditors was in the line of his endeavor. 
She had strengthened herself to bear his conviction 
and punishment, if he came back ; and since he was 
dead, this surrender of possessions tainted for her with 
the dishonesty in which the unhappy man had lived 
was nothing like loss ; it was rather a joyful relief. 

Yet it was a real sacrifice, and she was destined to 
feel it in the narrowed conditions of her life. But she 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


471 


had become used to narrow conditions ; she had learned 
how little people could live with when they had appar- 
ently nothing to live for ; and now that in Matt she 
had everything to live for, the surrender of all she had 
ill the world left her incalculably rich. 

Matt rejoiced with her in her decision, though he 
had carefully kept himself from influencing it. He 
was poor, too, except for the comfortable certainty 
that his father could not let him want ; but so far as 
he had been able, he had renounced his expectations 
from his father’s estate in order that he might seem 
to be paying Northwick’s indebtedness to the com- 
pany. Doubtless it was only an appearance ; in the 
end the money his father left would come equally to 
himself and Louise ; but in the meantime the resti- 
tution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more foi 
the moment than he let his son know. So he thought 
it well to allow Matt to go seriously to work on ac- 
count of it, and to test his economic theories in the* 
attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must 
be said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor 
Suzette ; there was that in her life which enabled her 
to dispense with the world and its pleasures and 
favors ; and he had long ceased to desire them. 

The Ponkwasset directors had no hesitation in ac- 
cepting the assignment of property made them by 
Northwick’s daughter. As a corporate body they had 
nothing to do with the finer question of right involved. 
They looked at the plain fact that they had been heav- 
ily defrauded by the former owner of the property. 


472 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


who had infeiably put it out of his hands in view of 
some such contingency as he had finally reached ; and 
as it had remained in the possession of his family ever 
since, they took no account of the length of time that 
had elapsed since he was actually the owner. They 
recognized the propriety of his daughter's action in 
surrendering it, and no member of the Board was 
quixotic enough to suggest that the company had no 
more claim upon the property she conveyed to them 
than upon any other piece of real estate in the com- 
monwealth. 

“They considered,” said Putney, who had com- 
pleted the affair on the part of Suzette, and was after- 
wards talking it over with his crony, Dr. Morrell, in 
something of the bitterness of defeat, “ that their first 
duty was to care for the interests of their stockhold- 
ers, who seemed to turn out all widows and orphans, 
as nearly as I could understand. It appears as if 
•nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponk- 
wasset dividends, and it would have been inhuman not 
to look after their interests. Well,” he went on, 
breaking from this grievance, “ there’s this satisfactory 
thing about it ; somebody has done something at last 
that he intended to do ; and, of course, the he in ques- 
tion is a she. ‘ She that was ’ Miss Suzette is the only 
person connected with the whole affair, that’s had her 
way. Everybody else’s way has come to nothing, begin- 
ning with my own. I can look back to the time when 
I meant to have the late J. Milton North wick’s blood ; 
I was lying low for years, waiting for him to do just 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


473 


what he did do at last, and I expected somehow, by the 
blessing of God, to help run him down, or bring him 
to justice, as we say The first thing I knew, I turned 
up his daughter’s counsel, and was devoting myself to 
the interests of a pair of grass-orphans with the high 
and holy zeal of a Board of Directors. All T wanted 
was to have J. Milton brought to trial, not so I could 
help send him to State’s prison with a band of music, 
but so I could get him off on the plea of insanity. 
But I wasn’t allowed to have my way, even in a little 
thing like that ; and of all the things that were planned 
for and against, and round about Northwick, just one 
has been accomplished. The directors failed to be in 
at the death ; and old Hilary has had to resign from 
the Board, and pay the defaulter’s debts. Pinney, I 
understand, considers himself a ruined man ; he’s left 
off detecting for a living, and gone back to interview- 
ing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope of 
making Northwick’s old age comfortable in their beau- 
tiful home on the money he had stolen ; and now that 
she’s dead it goes to his creditors. Why, even Billy 
Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like Wil- 
liam B. Gerrish, — couldn’t have his way about North- 
wick. No, sir ; Northwick himself couldn’t ! Look 
how he fooled away his time there in Canada, after he 
got off with money enough to start him on the high 
road to lortune airain. He couldn’t biuDe of his own 
motion ; and the only thing he really tried to do he 
failed in disgracefully, Adeline wouldn’t let him stay 
when he come back to buy himself off ; and that killed 


474 


THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 


her. Then, when he started home again, to take his 
punishment, the first thing he did was to drop dead. 
Justice herself couldn’t have her way with North wick. 
But I’m not sorry he slipped through her fingers. 
There wasn’t the stuff for an example in Northwick ; 
I don’t know that he’s much of a warning. He just 
seems to be a kind of — incident ; and a pretty com- 
mon kind. He was a mere creature of circumstances 
— like the rest of, us! His environment made him 
rich, and his environment made him a rogue. Some- 
times I think there was nothing to Northwick, except 
what happened to him. He’s a puzzle. But what do 
you say, Doc., to a world where we fellows keep fum- 
ing and fizzing away, with our little aims and pur- 
poses, and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly 
along, and get where it’s going without the slightest 
reference to what we do or don’t do ? I suppose it’s 
wicked to be a fatalist, but I’ll go a few mons of eter- 
nal punishment more, and keep my private opinion 
that it’s all Fate.” 

“ Why not call it Law ? ” the doctor suggested. 

“Well, I don’t like to be too bold. But taking it 
by and large, and seeing that most things seem to turn 
out pretty well in the end. I’ll split the difference with 
you and call it Mercy.” 


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IS to cater to the reading public there is a ten- 


I H ARPER*S WEEKLY ^4 oo~j 


dency to meet more than halfway a taste which 
IS by no means healthy, and coarse matter is 
provided, garnished with bad pictures, the blunt- 


HARPER’S BAZAR 


mg of the artistic sense is of small moment when 
compared with the abasement of the moral one. 
Never have the publishers of the Magazine, the 

PEOPLE $2 00 j 

Weekly, the Bazar, or Young People lowered 
that high standard which was assumed in theii 
first numbers. - N. Y. Times, March 8, 1891. 


Postage free to all Subscribers in the 
United States^ Canada, and Mexico 

HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK 






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